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Industrial Conciliation 

Report of 
The Proceedings of the Conference 

Held under the Auspices of 

The National Civic Federation 

At the 

Rooms of the Board of Trade and Transportation 

In New York 

y December i6 and 17, 1901 



G. P. Putnam's Sons 

New York and London 

SbelknicF^erbocfter prees 

1902 



^^^ 



AU6t 20 1902 



OOPV A. 



^1^ 






Copyright, 1902 

BY 

RALPH M. EASLEY 



Published July, 1902 



Ube ftnicftcrbocftcr iprcse, "ttcw 39orft 



PREFACE. 

THE National Conference on Industrial Concilia- 
tion held in New York, December i6 and 17, 
1901, followed naturally upon two preceding con- 
ferences held respectively under the auspices of the 
Civic Federation of Chicago, and its outgrowth, the 
National Civic Federation. The first conference 
was held at Chicago, November 13 and 14, 1894, 
succeeding the strike of the American Railway 
Union, usually known as the ** Pullman Strike." 
The characteristic features of that conference were 
academic and philanthropic. Emphasis was laid 
upon the importance of arbitration and conciliation 
and the service to the country which could be ex- 
pected from the adoption of peaceful methods in 
settling labor disputes. The proceedings were pub- 
lished in a pamphlet of ninety-six pages. 

The second conference was held in Chicago, De- 
cember 17 and 18, 1900, under the auspices of the 
National Civic Federation. This conference marked 
a step in advance, in that it brought clearly to the 
front the idea of conciliation as distinct from ar- 
bitration, and the plan of the joint agreement 
as the basis of conciliation. At this conference, 
also, much interest was taken in the discussion of 



iv PREFACE, 

compulsory arbitration, and the conference resulted 
in practically deciding that, for the United States 
at least, the proper line of progress should be in the 
direction, not of compulsory arbitration, but of 
voluntary conciliation. The proceedings of the 
conference were reported at length in the daily 
papers, but were not published in a separate volume. 
The more important papers are reproduced in Part II. 
of this volume. A Committee of twelve members, 
representing labor, capital, and the general public, 
was appointed at the conference. This Committee 
issued an ** Appeal to the American People *' recom- 
mending the adoption of annual or semi-annual joint 
agreements and the creation of joint boards of con- 
ciliation. This appeal will be found in Appendix I. 
of this volume. The Committee of Twelve met 
and organized in January, 1901, enlarged its mem- 
bership to forty and called a meeting to be held at 
New York in May. Meanwhile the Committee was 
able to avert the threatened anthracite coal strike 
by securing a conference of representatives of the 
operators and mine workers. At the meeting in 
New York, two public sessions were held, one in the 
rooms of the Chamber of Commerce and one in 
Cooper Union. At that time the Committee issued 
a statement known as **The Plan and Scope '' (see 
Appendix II.), providing for an educational cam- 
paign and practical work, and for the appointment 
of an Executive Committee. 

Pending the appointment of the Executive Com- 
mittee, a sub-committee was called into active par- 



PREFACE. V 

ticipation in the Albany Street Car Strike, the 
controversy between the National Metal Trades 
Association and the International Association of 
Machinists, and what is known as the United States 
Steel Strike, this latter practically requiring the con- 
tinuous effort of the sub-committee from the ist of 
July until the 15th of September. 

It was the success of the Committee in this work 
that demonstrated to the public the practical char- 
acter of the organization, and enabled it to command 
the attention and support of the representative men 
who accepted appointment upon the Executive 
Committee at the Conference in December follow- 
ing. 

The conference at New York in December, 1901, 
was held at the rooms of the New York Board of 
Trade and Transportation. Those who took part 
in the proceedings were leading men in commerce, 
industry, and in labor organizations. A complete 
stenographic report of their discussions is given in 
Part I. of this volume. The Industrial Committee, 
appointed after the adjournment of the conference, 
was organized as **the Industrial Department of the 
National Civic Federation " and includes the follow- 
ing named members and officers: 

OFFICERS AND EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE 

MARCUS A. HANNA, Chairman 
SAMUEL GOMPERS, ist Vice-Chairman 
OSCAR S. STRAUS, 2d Vice-Chairman 
CHARLES A. MOORE, Treasurer 
RALPH M. EASLEY, Secretary 



VI PREFACE, 

ON THE PART OF THE PUBLIC 

Grover Cleveland (Ex-President of the United States), Princeton, 

N. J. 
Cornelius N. Bliss (Ex-Secretary of the Interior), New York City. 
Oscar S. Straus (Member of the Permanent Court of Arbitration 

at The Hague), New York City. 
Charles Francis Adams (former President of the Union Pacific 

Railroad), Boston. 
Archbishop John Ireland (of the Roman Catholic Church), 

St. Paul. 
Bishop Henry C. Potter (of the Protestant Episcopal Church), 

New York City. 
Charles W. Eliot (President Harvard University), Cambridge, 

Mass. 
Franklin MacVeagh (Merchant), Chicago. 
James H. Eckels (former Comptroller of Currency of the United 

States), Chicago. 
John J. McCook (Lawyer), New York City. 
John G. Milburn (Lawyer), Buffalo. 
Charles J. Bonaparte (Lawyer), Baltimore. 
Ralph M. Easley, Ex-officio, New York City. 

ON THE PART OF EMPLOYERS 

Marcus A. Hanna (Coal Mines, Iron, Shipping, and Street Rail- 
ways), Cleveland. 

Charles M. Schwab (President of the U. S. Steel Corporation), 
New York City. 

S. R. Callaway (President of the American Locomotive Works), 
New York City. 

Charles A. Moore (Manning, Maxwell & Moore), New York City. 

Edward P. Ripley (President Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Rail- 
way System), Chicago. 

J. Kruttschnitt (Vice-President Southern Pacific Railroad Com- 
pany), San Francisco. 

H. H. Vreeland (President of the National Street Railway Asso- 
ciation), New York City. 



PREFACE, Vli 

Lewis Nixon (Proprietor Crescent Shipyard), New York City. 

Marcus M. Marks (President National Association of Clothing 
Manufacturers), New York City. 

James A. Chambers (President American Window Glass Company), 
Pittsburg. 

William H. Pfahler (former President National Founders' Asso- 
ciation), Philadelphia. 



ON THE PART OF WAGE-EARNERS 

Samuel Gompers (President American Federation of Labor), 
Washington. 

John Mitchell (President of the United Mine Workers of America), 
Indianapolis. 

Frank P. Sargent (Grand Master, Brotherhood of Locomotive 
Firemen), Peoria, 111. 

Theodore J. Shaffer (President Amalgamated Association of 
Iron, Steel, and Tin Workers), Pittsburg. 

James Duncan (General Secretary Granite Cutters' National Union), 
Boston. 

Daniel J. Keefe (President International Longshoremen's Asso- 
ciation), Detroit. 

James O'Connell (President International Association of Machin- 
ists), Washington. 

Martin Fox (President Iron Moulders' Union of North America), 
Cincinnati. 

James M. Lynch (President International Typographical Union), 
Indianapolis. 

Edgar E. Clark (Grand Chief Conductor, Order of Railway Con- 
ductors), Cedar Rapids, Iowa. 

Henry White (General Secretary United Garment Workers of 
America), New York. 

W. MacArthur (Editor Coast Seametis Journal), San Francisco. 



Upon its organization, the Committee adopted 
the following ** Statement of Purpose *' : 



viil PREFACE, 

STATEMENT OF PURPOSE 

The scope and province of this Department shall be 
to do what may seem best to promote industrial peace 
and prosperity; to be helpful in establishing rightful re- 
lations between employers and workers; by its good 
offices to endeavor to obviate and prevent strikes and 
lockouts, to aid in renewing industrial relations where a 
rupture has occurred. 

That at all times representatives of employers and 
workers, organized or unorganized, should confer for 
the adjustment of differences or disputes before an acute 
stage is reached, and thus avoid or minimize the number 
of strikes or lockouts. 

That mutual agreements as to conditions under which 
labor shall be performed should be encouraged, and that 
when agreements are made, the terms thereof should be 
faithfully adhered to, both in letter and spirit, by both 
parties. 

This Department, either as a whole or sub-committee 
by it appointed, shall, when requested by both parties 
to a dispute, act as a forum to adjust and decide upon 
questions at issue between workers and their employers, 
provided in its opinion the subject is one of sufficient 
importance. 

This Department will not consider abstract industrial 
problems. 

This Department assumes no powers of arbitration 
unless such powers be conferred by both parties to a 
dispute. 

The Committee also adopted by-laws, of which 
the following articles bear upon the organization 



PREFACE, IX 

and the methods to be employed in case of labor 
disputes: 

ARTICLE VII 

CONCILIATION COMMITTEE 

The Chairman shall appoint a Committee on Concilia- 
tion to consist of nine members, three of whom shall be 
selected from each group, whose duty it shall be, upon 
notice from the Chairman of threatened strike or lockout 
of more than local magnitude, to use its good offices in 
restoring harmonious relations, reporting its action to the 
Executive Committee. 

ARTICLE VIII 
ARBITRATION 

Should the efforts of the Conciliation Committee prove 
ineffective, and should both parties to the dispute desire 
the services of the Executive Committee of this Depart- 
ment, they may be invited to select two employers and 
two wage-earners from said Executive Committee, to 
serve as an Arbitration Board. Should the four find it 
necessary to appoint an umpire to finally decide the dis- 
pute, they may select a fifth member from the group 
representing the public. Nothing in this Article shall 
be construed to prevent the Conciliation Committee from 
securing, when desirable, arbitrators outside of the Ex- 
ecutive Committee. 

ARTICLE IX 

EMERGENCIES 

Should a controversy seem of such magnitude as to 
justify such action, the officers shall be authorized to 



PREFACE, 



call a meeting of the entire Executive Committee to con- 
sider the situation, and take such action as may, in their 
judgment, be required. 

ARTICLE X 

AUXILIARY COMMITTEES 

The Executive Committee may appoint Auxiliary 
Committees to deal with local disturbances, the rules 
governing the same to be in harmony with the general 
purpose of the Industrial Department. 

National Civic Federation, 
New York, April, 1902. 



CONTENTS. 

PARTI. 

PACK 

Report of the New York Conference, December 16-17, 
1901 I 

Opening Address, Hon. Oscar S. Straus .... 3 

Address, Bishop Henry C. Potter, of the Protestant Epis- 
copal Church ........ 8 

Address, Senator M. A. Hanna . . . . .11 

Address, Archbishop John Ireland, of the Roman Catholic 

Church ......... 14 

Address, Wm. H. Pfahler, Foriiier President of the Na- 
tional Founders' Association ..... 19 

Address, John Phillips, Secretary of the National Hatters' 

Union ......... 24 

Address, John J. Donnelly, President New York Brick- 
layers' Association ....... 27 

Address, Jas. Ryan, Vice-President New York State Fed- 
eration of Labor ....... 29 

Address, Charles M. Schwab, President United States 

Steel Corporation . . . . . . . 32 - 

Address, Jas. B. Reynolds, Head Worker University 

Settlement, New York ...... 35 

Address, Marcus M. Marks, President National Associa- 
tion of Clothing Manufacturers . • • . 37 

Address, E. Dana Durand, Secretary United States Indus- 
trial Commission ....... 40 

Address, Frank P. Sargent, Grand Master Brotherhood 

of Locomotive Firemen ...... 48 

Address, Lewis Nixon, Proprietor Crescent Shipyard, New 

York ......... 59 

xi 



xii CONTENTS. 

PAGE 

Address, Horace M. Eaton, General Secretary Boot and 

Shoe Workers* Union .63 

Address, Samuel Gompers, President American Federa- 
tion of Labor ........ 67 

Address, Ben Tillett, Fraternal Delegate to American 

Federation of Labor from Great Britain ... 73 

Address, John Mitchell, President United Mine Workers 

of America ........ 78 

Address, Jas. Duncan, First Vice-President American Fed- 
eration of Labor 80 



PART II. 

Papers Read at the Chicago Conference, December 17- 

18, 1900 . ' 89 

Opening Address, Franklin MacVeagh . . . . 91 '- 

Trade Boards of Conciliation and Arbitration Abroad, 
''/ Carroll D. Wright, United States Commissioner of 

Labor ......... 99'-' 

Trade Conciliation and Arbitration in the United States, 
^^2 E. Dana Durand, Secretary United Slates Industrial 

^ Commission ........ 141 ^ 

Conferences of Iron Moulders' and Founders' Associations, 
Martin Fox, President Iron Moulders' Union of North 
America . . . . . . . . . 155 

Conferences of the Iron Moulders' Union and National 
Founders' Association, H. W. Hoyt, ex-President 
National Founders' Association .... 168 

^ Conciliation, not Arbitration, Chauncey H. Castle, Presi- 
dent Stove Founders* National Defence Association . 176 
Conferences of the Longshoremen and Dock Managers, 
Daniel J. Keefe, President International Longshore- 
men's Association . . . . . . . 188 

Organized Employers, Frederick P. Bagley, Master Build- 
ers' Association of Chicago ..... 192 

The Organization of the Employer Class as a Prerequisite 
of Conciliation and Arbitration, Herman Justi, Com- 
missioner of the Illinois Coal Operators' Association . 204 



CONTENTS, Xlll 

PAGB 

Arbitration and Political Action, Frank Buchanan, Presi- 
dent Bridge and Structural Iron Workers' Union of ^"^ 
Chicago ......... 213 

Conferences and Agreements of Railway Conductors, E. 
E. Clark, Grand Chief Conductor Order of Railway 
Conductors of America . . . . . .217 

Indiana Labor Law, Hon. R. S. Taylor . . . . 223 

The Massachusetts State Board of Mediation and Arbitra- ^ ^^^ 

tion, W. O. Reed, President of the Board . . 227 ''^"^ 

The Innocent Public — Its case Presented by a Farmer, 
John M. Stahl, Secretary Farmers' National Associa- 
tion . . . . , 238 

The Legal Phase of the Arbitration Question, Morris M. 

Cohn, President Board of Trade, Little Rock, Ark. 244 

The Attitude of Labor Unions toward Machinery and 
Restriction of Output, Henry White, Secretary United 
Garment Workers of America 254 



APPENDIXES. 

Appendix I. — Appeal to the American People, Chicago Con- 
ference .......... 269 

Appendix II. — Address of the National Committee on Con- 
ciliation and Arbitration, May 8, 1901 .... 271 



PART I. 

REPORT OF THE NEW YORK CONFERENCE, 
DECEMBER 16-17, 1901. 



NATIONAL CONFERENCE ON IN- 
DUSTRIAL CONCILIATION. 

MEETING OF THE NATIONAL CIVIC FED- 
ERATION AT NEW YORK CITY, DECEM- 
BER 16-17, 1901. 

Hon. Oscar S. Straus, presiding, opened the meeting 
with the following address: 

Fellow Laborers: 

In the name of the National Civic Federation, I greet 
you all. 

You remember the story in David Harum — how, 
when the millionaires entertained him at Newport, he 
said **low bridge," and instantly all present ducked 
their heads in recognition of their origin. This is pre- 
eminently true in our country, and it is our pride and 
our strength. So long as this continues true the chasm 
between labor and capital can neither be very wide nor 
very deep. 

I do not know why I was selected for this honorable 
privilege of presiding over this conference, — in many 
respects one of the most notable that has ever convened, 
— except that it was my good fortune to compose the dif- 
ferences of laborers in other fields, in the spiritual field, 
between our missionaries on the banks of the Bosporus 
and his Imperial Majesty, the Sultan of Turkey. 

3 



4 INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION, 

It has been said that one half of the misery of the 
world results from ignorance, and the remainder results 
from passion. I am sure a large share of the trouble 
between capital and labor is traceable to these two 
disturbing factors. Conferences such as these, called 
together for purposes of deliberation and conciliation, 
are the best means for coming to a working under- 
standing. 

It is not for me to do more than indicate an opinion as 
to what form that understanding should ultimately take. 
I have faith in the conference of the intelligent leaders 
of both sides. Organization is concentration and paves 
the way to arriving at a better, more definite, more 
speedy, and more permanent understanding of recipro- 
cal rights, leading to reciprocal concessions. President 
McKinley in his last address to his fellow-citizens gave 
wise advice the spirit of which applies to this situation : 
** Commercial wars are unprofitable. A policy of good 
will and friendly trade relations will prevent reprisals. 
Reciprocity treaties are in harmony with the spirit of 
the times. Measures of retaliation are not." I believe 
in mutual agreement as the first and most reliable 
method, followed, when necessary, by arbitration as a 
second stage. I doubt the wisdom or practicability of 
the passage of laws for compulsory arbitration. 

Industrial peace to be permanent must not rest upon 
fear or force, but upon good will and equal rights, and, 
if you please, upon equal power. 

You, gentlemen, are the representatives of the brains 
and sinews of the industrial forces and energies of the 
country — organized capital and organized labor. From 
these two bodies, acting in accord and harmony, with just 
regard for the rights, duties, and privileges of each, 



INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION. 5 

emanate the material welfare, happiness, and prosperity 
of the eighty million people of these United States. 

In no country are conditions by law and by nature 
better adapted to the equitable adjustment of the re- 
ciprocal rights, duties, and privileges of labor and capi- 
tal than in our own — and why ? Because we are a 
democratic republic, with no class privileges nor class 
distinctions to separate us — and because the laborer of 
yesterday is the capitalist of to-day, and because, too, 
the capitalist of to-day may be the laborer of to-morrow. 
Men like Leland Stanford, Carnegie, and Rockefeller 
were all architects of their own millions, who, in recogni- 
tion of their struggles from, and their love for, the labor- 
ing classes, dedicate their surplus millions to enlarge the 
avenues of access to the highways of success. In one 
single day during the past week two of these successful 
laborers gave forty million dollars to keep those high- 
ways open long after we shall have passed from the 
scenes of their successful struggles. 

That the wage-earners form the primary schools for 
the millionaires is evidenced every day; that they are 
more prosperous every year is evidenced on all sides; 
look at the deposits in our savings-banks, which aggre- 
gate in round numbers two thousand, five hundred 
million dollars, an average of more than four hundred 
dollars for each of its six million depositors. No other 
country can make a showing comparable with this. 
And in no other country do wage-earners through well 
directed energy in larger numbers become capitalists, 
and capitalists through misdirected energy more readily 
become wage-earners, than in our own; there are here 
less obstructions on the up-grade as well as on the 
down-grade. 



6 INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION. 

Our country is characterized by certain classes in 
Europe in tones of contempt — but really out of envy for 
our prosperity and in fear of our aggressive competition — 
as the most commercial country of this commercial age. 
So be it, we accept the designation. We glory in it, 
because we recognize that the much decried spirit of 
commercialism contains more of the spirit of fair play, 
fair exchange, and of humanity and all that constitutes a 
great and prosperous nation, than that system whose 
energies are concentrated to convert men into slaughter- 
ing machines, and to offer them up as food for shot and 
shell, that system of militarism which makes of Europe 
an armed camp, which glorifies the state at the expense 
of the individual. 

That we can wage war when necessity demands, our 
entire history is a proof; but, thank God, we have not 
made and will not make our country an armed camp, 
but a country where the humane arts, where the field 
and the forge and the counting-room combine for peace 
and plenty. 

You great captains of industries, you the great leaders 
of organized labor, have come here in a spirit of con- 
ciliation and deliberation. May that spirit characterize 
your entire proceedings, and may our meeting tend to a 
better understanding between the constituents of these 
powerful interests so dependent upon each other, known 
as capital and labor, but which in fact are but members 
of the same household, wherein the welfare of each rests 
upon mutual concessions to the rights and privileges of 
the other. In the harmonious union of these two forces 
lies the basis for true expansion, to conquer the markets 
of the world for those products of American farms and 
factories in which we excel as a producing nation. 



INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION, / 

I will conclude these introductory remarks with the 
sentiment so fitting for this occasion contained in Presi- 
dent Roosevelt*s message to Congress: **When all is said 
and done the rule of brotherhood remains as the indis- 
pensable prerequisite to success in the kind of national 
life for which we strive.'* 

We have here a number of prominent gentlemen whose 
services are identified with the cause for which we are 
gathered together. I regret that at this morning's meet- 
ing some of the leading representatives of labor have not 
as yet arrived, but they will arrive later. I shall take 
pleasure in calling upon a gentleman to address you who 
requires no introduction. He has not only been a 
spiritual leader for great numbers throughout these 
United States but he has been in actual touch with the 
problems which we have here before us. It was he who 
was mainly instrumental in organizing the Board of 
Mediation and Conciliation. I call upon the Right 
Reverend Bishop Potter. (Applause.) 

Bishop Potter: There is a slight inaccuracy on the 
part of the Chairman in his statement in regard to the ori- 
gin of the Board of Mediation and Conciliation. The re- 
sponsibility, or privilege, of having taken the initiative in 
that belongs to the present Mayor-elect of this city and 
Dr. Felix Adler and two or three others as well as myself. 

I should like, if I might, first of all, to offer a resolu- 
tion that the Secretary, when he is appointed, be in- 
structed to send a telegram to the gentlemen of whom 
we have learned through you that they are unavoidably 
detained from this meeting, to express to them our regret 
at their absence and to assure them that the meeting 
will be held together until their arrival. 



8 INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION. 

Motion seconded and adopted. 

Bishop Potter: I move that Mr. Easley be appointed 
Secretary. 

Motion seconded and adopted. 

Bishop Potter: I wish to congratulate the gathering 
within this room upon two things. First of all upon its 
informality, which I venture to say is a very important 
element in it. I think I express the mind of a great 
many people when I say that nothing has happened in 
the history of the great social problem with which we 
are concerned so important as the initiative which has 
been taken here to-day. The bringing together of the 
great forces of industrial activity in some comity of in- 
tercourse and conference is in my judgment the largest 
step in the direction of the solution of problems with 
which the whole country is concerned that has as yet 
been taken, and this assemblage is to be congratulated 
on the fact that the gentleman who is called to preside 
over it has, as he has reminded us, been already success- 
ful in harmonizing differences between men. Certainly 
anybody who can harmonize differences in which the 
Sultan of Turkey is concerned may be considered as 
having eminent gifts for such a task as ours. 

For, what we want is, first, intelligent consideration of 
these complex questions, of the very highest order. 
While I was sitting and listening to you, sir, I was 
reminded very much of what my brother Bishop of Ten- 
nessee told me the other day of a colored meeting in his 
diocese where a colored brother, with a very loud voice, 
but with very feeble mental endowment, was pounding 
the pulpit and crying out, '*0 Lord, give us power, 
give us power.*' At length an old black man who sat 
behind hiin called out in ^ sub- tone which was audible 



INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION. 9 

to the whole audience, **Brother, it is not more power 
that you want, but more idees ! " 

Gentlemen, that is what we want. We have had a 
great deal of rhetoric on both sides; but I confess I 
have been lately encouraged in the belief that the ques- 
tions that are to be considered in such a conference as 
this will be dealt with thoughtfully, from evidences that 
we have had during the last year or two of the clear and 
honest thinking that has been elicited on both sides in 
the bodies to be represented in this room. 

For it is not more power that we want, whether we 
are working men or capitalists. Mere power is a very 
dangerous thing, but power regulated by ideas is of equal 
value whether it is power in the organization of labor 
or in the organization of capital. And the growth of a 
habit of intelligent scrutiny of the industrial problems 
to-day is, to my mind, the most interesting and most 
promising note with reference to the future. In that re- 
spect I venture to say that I hope the expectations 
which are kindled in the minds of the public in regard 
to such gatherings as this will be agreeably met. We are 
constrained, I think, to recognize the falsity of certain 
superficial remedies for labor troubles, and the need, in 
dealing with them, of a wise discretion. 

But the best thing in the present situation is the 
animus behind it. In that regard there has been great 
progress. The attitude of men in the organized forces 
either of labor or capital is to-day a more hopeful one 
than we have ever known. And if we can furnish the 
third quantity in the whole problem, I believe you will 
go a long way toward success. 

Last evening I was dining with an eminent artist, and 
we were talking about his department of art, and the 



10 INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION. 

work of Mr. Burne-Jones. Both of these men are con- 
cerned in kinds of work, whether in glass or marble or 
plaster or other materials, which involve contact with 
the workmen. This gentleman told me that Burne-Jones 
had complained to him that he greatly regretted the pas- 
sage of those earlier days in his profession when, after he 
had made a drawing, he could follow that drawing into the 
workshop alongside the man who turned it into stone, or 
marble, or wood, or whatever it was. Art, he said, when- 
ever the artist and the workmen were not in close touch, 
was in danger of becoming commercialized. There is a 
very great truth there. That is the danger with all 
modern work, — that it will become merely commercial- 
ized the moment you take the human element and 
human contacts out of it. And I hope one of the highest 
aims of this organization will be to get back those con- 
tacts into the relations of capital and labor and to do that 
by restoring the points of contact. The misery of modern 
industrial life I maintain is in its isolations. The mo- 
ment you get a great body of men who know nothing 
about each other you have got the germ of innumerable 
evils. And the greatest service an organization like this 
can render is to re-establish contact with others of men 
who are in the habit of thinking or working by them- 
selves. A labor organization gets its members into a 
room and they are harangued by nobody but men 
who look at their side of the problem. The capitalists 
on the other hand do the same thing. And so if I 
were asked to design a seal for this society it should 
be the representation of the fable of the Knights of 
the Gold and the Silver Shields, each of them charg- 
ing one another with being a liar, because neither of 
them can see both sides of the shield. Then I should 



INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION. II 

make the motto for that shield, '* Put yourself in his 
place. * ' (Applause. ) 

Mr. Straus: This morning in taking up the paper I 
read the following: 

*' I would rather have the credit of making successful the move- 
ment to bring labor and capital into closer relations of confidence 
and reliance than be President of the United States. If by resign- 
ing my seat in the United States Senate I could bring to fruition the 
plans that we are now fostering to make strikes, lockouts, and great 
labor disputes impossible, I would gladly do so. I think it is the 
grandest thing that could be accomplished in this country. I would 
want no greater monument than to have the world remember that I 
did something to end wars between American labor and American 
capital." 

These are the sentiments expressed by Senator Hanna. 
(Applause.) I have the great pleasure, not of introduc- 
ing to you, because you all know him, but of asking 
Senator Hanna to give expression to his thoughts upon 
this occasion. 

Senator Hanna: Gentlemen, those are my senti- 
ments. They came from the heart, and they came after 
a long experience in the industrial world and almost 
daily contact with labor since I have been a man of 
business. 

In my business connection it so happens that I have 
been engaged in that class which has necessitated the 
employment of a large number of laborers. In 1874 it 
happened for the first time that I had direct dealing with 
a distinct labor organization. That was the year that 
the National Bituminous Coal Miners* Association of the 
United States was formed. I remember the incident 
when the president of that organization and its secre- 
tary called upon me in my office. It was a year which 



12 INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION. 

followed a long and disastrous strike in a section of the 
coal mining districts of Ohio. They came to me with a 
proposition representing their organization that some- 
thing ought to be and might be accomplished to do away 
with the disastrous strike, and by way of argument they 
read to me their constitution and by-laws. I said to 
them, ** Gentlemen, if you mean what you have said in 
those articles, I am with you. If it is your purpose and 
determination to lay the foundation for a better under- 
standing between capital and labor I will give you my 
hearty co-operation." And having become convinced 
that there was sincerity in their purpose I immediately 
took up the operators* side of the question and in a short 
time we had an operators' organization and a committee 
appointed from each, to whom was to be referred all dif- 
ferences and difficulties to be settled by arbitration. 
During the life of that labor organization all troubles 
and differences were settled by arbitration. That in- 
cident made me an advocate in favor of organized labor. 
(Applause.) 

And from that day until to-day I have been a believer 
that at some time that sentiment might dominate and the 
results from it would be what I have always dreamed of 
and hoped for. From that day until to-day I have never 
ceased in my individual capacity to work to secure those 
results. During those years I have seen and been in 
contact with many differences between capital and labor. 
I have studied the proposition from every standpoint, 
never abandoning the hope, as I saw from appearances 
on both sides a near approach to a better understanding. 
Therefore I say I never have abandoned the hope that 
that day might come. And in this presence, and in the 
interest which I see manifested by those here to-day, I 



INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION. 1 3 

believe the day is near at hand. To say that I am in- 
terested in it is to put it very mildly, and although I did 
not intend that that sentiment should have the publicity 
which your President has given it^ — and perhaps it may 
seem a little egotistical to have mentioned it in that con- 
nection, — I reaffirm the sentiment by the statement that 
I stand ready and willing and anxious to give the best 
that is in me while life remains to accomplish this pur- 
pose. (Applause.) 

I sincerely believe that the opportunity is now ripe, 
and from such expressions as we have heard from Bishop 
Potter and from others, I am encouraged to believe that 
that third element is coming into power, making manifest 
an interest outside of those two forces which have been 
engaged together in this country, that will solve all prob- 
lems, surmount all difficulties, and bring the two opposite 
forces together. 

This is not the time nor place perhaps to discuss par- 
ticulars. I simply want to improve the opportunity to 
give expression to that thought, that it is my all-absorb- 
ing interest and firm determination as a worker in the 
field, to join with all those, the laborer and the employer, 
to bring about a condition of things which will accom- 
plish more in the direction of good government, good 
social relations, and good morals than any one subject 
which the public mind can take hold of. (Applause.) 

The faith in me of this accomplishment has grown 
stronger from year to year. So that, my friends, I feel that 
this is but the beginning of the end which will accom- 
plish the purposes for which we are assembled here. 
And with the assurance that in every way that I can 
I will serve with you, I am at the service of this organi- 
zation. (Applause.) 



14 INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION. 

Mr. Straus: I am sure we are all grateful for the 
encouraging words that have already been spoken and 
for the attendance of men here who come from a far dis- 
tance in order to lend their help to the proper considera- 
tion of this most important subject. I will call upon a 
gentleman who, though in the spiritual field, has done 
great work in the practical field as well, who has also 
come from a long distance, and whom I have the pleasure 
of calling upon: the Most Reverend John Ireland, 
Archbishop of St. Paul. 

Archbishop Ireland : Gentlemen of the conference — 
When I received the invitation to attend this conference 
I believed it was for me a solemn duty to accept the 
proffered honor. A minister of religion, I held that it 
was my duty to contribute in any way within my power 
to what makes for peace, for harmony, for brotherhood 
among men, for the growth and elevation of humanity. 
A minister of a Church whose supreme Pontiff has de- 
clared that the greatest social question to-day is the 
maintenance of peace between capital and labor and has 
impressed upon the leaders of the people that they must 
unceasingly strive to bring about and preserve such 
peace, I believed that it was my duty to hearken to an 
appeal so much in harmony with his encyclicals. And 
glad I am that I was invited hither, and that I am with 
you to-day. As I look around this hall, notice the men 
that are here assembled, and listen to the addresses that 
are made, I realize the immense possibilities for good 
that exist in the conference. 

There has been not unfrequently discord between em- 
ployers and employees, discord that has wrought great 
harm to the interests of both classes. The chief cause 
of such discord is this, that employers and employees 



INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION. 1 5 

have not sufficiently been brought together, have not 
sufficiently looked into the faces of one another, drunk 
in the ideas of one another, and felt the warmth of the 
hands and hearts of one another. 

Bishop Potter remarked that something more than 
power is needed for the quieting of social agitation; 
that ideas are needed; and that ideas will come from 
our mutual discussions. But there is something else 
needed besides either power or ideas: it is brotherhood, 
the manifestation of the love which as men, as children 
of God, we owe to one another, and which, I am sure, 
we feel in our hearts for one another! This, too, will be 
a result of the conference. 

I have met with all classes of men. I have met with 
rich and with poor, with employers and with employees, 
with capitalists and with workmen. I think I know the 
ideas and the feelings of men on both sides of the ques- 
tion. And I am satisfied that what is necessary for 
mutual understanding and for industrial peace is to 
create a channel by which there can be between classes 
an interchange of ideas and a mutual flow of brother- 
hood. Employers realize that they are brothers of their 
fellow-men, that their fellow-men are their brothers. I 
do not know the employer who is not ready to say that 
the ideal and proper condition of the workman is that 
sufficient means be earned by him to enable him to 
lead a life becoming to a man, becoming to a child of 
God; and that efforts should be made by all that indus- 
trial operations may afford, in all cases, to the workman 
such sufficient means. I do not know the capitalist who 
thinks that a man, whoever he be, however poor and 
weak, is a mere piece of machinery, valued only as a 
producer of industrial force. Capitalists who would 



l6 INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION. 

have so thought may possibly have existed in past times 
or may possibly exist in other lands than ours. Such do 
not exist to-day in America. On the other hand I do 
not know the working man who does not confess that his 
arms are of no account to earn a livelihood for himself 
and his family unless he be assisted by the leaders of in- 
dustry who gather in the financial resources needed to 
purchase machinery and to open markets, whose superior 
ability and judgment are required to marshal into a com- 
pact and successful phalanx scattered and, so to speak, 
inorganic labor. That the workman may have an oppor- 
tunity to earn a livelihood there must be within his reach 
capitalists and employers. Nor are there laborers to- 
day in America who do not realize that whatever may be 
the equality of men as to legal and political rights, there 
is among men inequality of talent, of power, of industry, 
arising from the very nature of each one, that through 
the thousand circumstances of society there is among 
men inequality of circumstances and of opportunities, 
and that as a consequence there will be necessarily and 
always among men inequality of possession of the things 
of earth. 

But why is it that despite such convictions strikes 
occur and difficulties and misunderstandings arise be- 
tween employers and workmen ? Largely because em- 
ployers and workmen remain apart; because they do 
not know one another sufficiently; because often men of 
one class or of the other act rather under impulse than 
as the result of sober reflection. If when, in the future, 
difficulties threaten harmony and peace — -we know human 
nature too well not to imagine that difficulties will not be 
forthcoming — men meet, inquiring what is the cause of 
complaint, striving to understand one another, difficulties 



INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION, 1 7 

to a large extent at least will be overcome. As a storm 
approaches, instead of looking from a distance at one an- 
other with angry feelings, let men touch hands, frankly 
admit that the good of all requires a calm atmosphere, and 
in nine cases out of ten the storm will be turned aside. 

This is the aim of our conference. There is nothing 
more encouraging in the field of labor and capital to-day 
than this very fact, that to-day men of all classes come 
together and say **Let us have peace.'* Mr. Hanna, 
speaking from the fulness of his heart, declares himself 
ready to make any sacrifice for the sake of industrial 
peace: his words echo the thoughts and feelings of all 
who are assembled with him, employers, workmen, repre- 
sentatives of the general public, friendly alike to em- 
ployers and to workmen. With this spirit dominating 
our assembly, its success is at once assured. 

As the honored Chairman has said, in no country of 
the world is there such an opportunity for industrial 
peace and mutual understanding as there is in Amer- 
ica. America is a democratic country. In political and 
social strivings Americans start from the principle that 
they all are fellow-citizens and brothers. Their politi- 
cal constitution makes it plain that in all things they 
ought in the name of brotherly love to understand one 
another, respect and safeguard the rights of one another. 
Elsewhere classes of men by right of birth and of titles 
may imagine themselves better than others: elsewhere 
classes of men bowed down through long centuries of 
servitude, thinking that no ray of sunshine can peer 
through the overhanging cloud, find room in their hearts 
only for despair and hatred. Pride on one side, despair 
on the other, produce discord and revolution. In Amer- 
ica, conditions are different. Here all citizens are 



1 8 INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION. 

compelled, when standing before the electoral urn, to 
acknowledge an equal citizenship with other men, and a 
common brotherhood. Here men who have merit may 
rise; the poor man, the workman of to-day, may be- 
come the capitalist and the employer of to-morrow. 
Americans are under especial obligation to establish in 
their land industrial and social peace. Mr. Chairman, 
I know it, from all countries in the world to-day men, 
lovers of their kind, men, workers for humanity and for 
religion, look toward the United States for a solution of 
this mighty question of the relations of capital and labor. 
In every country of Europe I have heard it said: **If 
you cannot in America settle this question, the task is 
hopeless. * * If the fact of our meeting to-day were known 
throughout the world, tens of thousands of anxious eyes 
would be turned toward this hall and from tens of thou- 
sands of hearts prayers would go up to the supreme 
Father that our counsels be wise and our efforts be fruit- 
ful. From heaven the God of peace, the common 
Father of heaven, blesses our meeting. 

Mr. Easley: Mr. Chairman, there are two gentlemen 
present this morning whom I think the committee would 
like to hear from before we adjourn. One is Mr. Wil- 
liam H. Pfahler, of Philadelphia, a large stove manu- 
facturer, who is regarded as the father of the idea of 
organization of employers. About fifteen years ago he 
organized the stove manufacturers, and five years later 
he found that worked so well that he was instrumental 
in organizing the National Founders' Association, an 
organization of some six hundred manufacturers, and a 
few years after that the National Metal Trades Associa- 
tion of six hundred manufacturers. 



INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION. 1 9 

The second gentleman is Mr. John Phillips, who has 
for nineteen years been the Secretary of the National 
Union of Hatters. Mr. Phillips is not prepared to 
speak this morning, but being the only national repre- 
sentative of labor organizations present is willing to 
speak before the session closes. 

We have also with us some ten representatives of the 
largest organizations in New York City. 

The Chairman: Mr. Pf abler, we shall be most pleased 
to have you make some remarks from your vast business 
experience on this subject. 

Mr. William H. Pfahler: I only arrived in the 
room a few moments ago, but I fail to realize, after the 
few words I have heard since I came into the room, 
that there is a single other word to say on this proposi- 
tion. In the few moments that I listened to the closing 
remarks that you have all heard I felt that I could not 
go out of this room without assuming the moral respon- 
sibility which has been put before us in such firm and 
certain tones. There is absolutely no doubt in my mind 
that this country is ready to-day to take the initial steps 
in social progress so ably outlined, and I am more than 
pleased to know from one who is an authority on the 
question that the world is looking to this country to 
solve this problem. Here and here only can it be fought 
out, and here and here only can it be ended as it must 
be finally in the progress of humanity. 

I have thought along this line for many years and I 
have wondered why it was, first as the employer of a few 
men, that there was that lack of harmony which common 
sense indicated there should be. I often wondered 
when I was superintendent of a small plant why it was 
that I went to my home to devise ways and means for 



20 INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION. 

earning money and distributing it among my employees 
on Saturday and that they should go from my shop some- 
times to study means to prevent the progress of that very 
work. It seemed an unnatural condition. It seemed a 
condition which arose from some cause that I could not 
understand. And I have often tried to solve it. To 
my mind it goes back to that natural process which 
underlies every beautiful piece of nature and every 
mechanism of nature. It is the process of units. We 
have forgotten to watch the units that go to make 
up a great body and a great proposition of any kind. 
I have with perfect freedom, talking with some of the 
gentlemen here who represent the great labor unions 
of this country, said, and I believe it, that the struggle 
to-day is the struggle to understand the progress that is 
going on in commercial and mechanical circles which is 
changing the unit by which everything must be measured. 
There was a time I believe when the unit of time was the 
measure of work. There was a time when the unit of 
energy was the measure of work. But to-day if one thing 
is certain it is that the unit of results is the only measure 
that can be applied to the workman, to the employer, or 
to the citizen. 

We are in an age when units are changing. We are 
in an age when combined effort is the only means of suc- 
cess. And no matter what our short-sighted views some- 
times may develop when we look at progress and think it 
is eliminating the units, I believe the unit is just begin- 
ning to work, I believe the unit to-day which is going to 
establish the standard of results as the measure of every 
man is going to make every man a better man. It can't 
help but do it. For that reason years ago in my own in- 
dustry, which is the manufacturing of stoves, a few of 



INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION. 21 

our leading manufacturers conceived the idea that we 
must become a unit to accomplish any result from our 
standpoint. Since the Iron Moulders* Union, which was 
then and is now an ably managed, conservative body, was 
approaching every question of labor from a standpoint of 
units which represented to it all men employed in that 
industry — we felt we could only meet it by a standard 
of co-operation of the employer. We organized an 
association at that time, and it was a great many years 
ago, for defence. We began that association to defend 
our business against the aggressions of the Iron Moulders* 
Union. We worked along those lines two or three years, 
fighting each issue as it arose. But we very soon learned 
that our point was wrong, that our approach to the ques- 
tion was wrong, and we changed the policy of that As- 
sociation to one of negotiation, to that of an association 
which should from our standpoint show the men who 
were in our employ the condition of affairs, should learn 
the condition of their lives and industries, and should 
co-operate upon a line which would produce the best 
results. The result of it was that for eleven years there 
has not been a strike in the stove industry. Why ? 
We have approached that subject through representatives 
of each body, and if there is anything valuable in this 
country to-day it is the representative system, so long as 
those representatives are well qualified men to carry out 
their purposes. 

We meet yearly. We confer upon the condition of 
business and the wages. Those wages are settled each 
year for a year, and I am proud to say that they never 
for one moment have been violated on either side of the 
contract (applause), that no contract ever made with 
the Iron Moulders* Union by our Association has been 



22 INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION. 

violated by either party. And I don't think that I am 
making unfair use of trade secrets when I say that in 
1893 and in 1894, when all of you who were manufac- 
turers and workmen know the condition of affairs, 
when it was absolutely certain from the employers* 
standpoint that we could not successfully market two 
thirds of our products, a condition which always termi- 
nates in a reduction of price by the unwise manufac- 
turer, the representatives of the Iron Moulders' Union 
came into our conference and asked for a reduction in 
their wages. They asked it because they believed it 
would make progress, they believed it would enable us 
to market our products. They believed it was the best 
thing to do from their standpoint. And I want to em- 
phasize the point that it was the result of their considera- 
tion of conditions which made them believe that a 
reduction of wages would give them more days* work 
perhaps and better results. We showed them from our 
standpoint the falsity of that proposition. The result 
was there was no reduction in wages. The result was 
there was no reduction in the selling price of our prod- 
ucts. We all suffered alike, — the manufacturer lost 
upon his investment by reason of the decreased output, 
the workman lost in the annual summing up of his year*s 
work, but we lost equally. I only cite this fact to show 
that there was a point upon which our united efforts 
brought about a result beneficial to both, and in support 
of what the gentleman has said, that there can be no loss 
in any way by a united effort to produce harmonious 
relations between the employer and the employee. 
(Applause.) 

Mr. Straus: Gentlemen of the conference, there are 



INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION, 23 

several other gentlemen we wish to hear from this morn- 
ing, but I wish to tell you as a matter of information 
that when our conference of this morning ends it will be 
until to-morrow morning, when we will have with us I 
hope every gentleman who is present now and also the 
national labor leaders of the country, Mr. Gompers, Mr. 
Mitchell, Mr. Fox, Mr. Keefe, Mr. Shaffer, and a num- 
ber of others, who have adjourned their meeting at Scran- 
ton for the purpose of being present here to-day, but 
unfortunately, on account of the delay of the trains by 
reason of the storm, they were not able to arrive in time 
for this morning's session. 

I think I also can say further that there will be some 
material results from this conference, and one of these 
results I think I can prophesy will be a working Execu- 
tive Committee composed equally from the ranks of 
labor and from the ranks of capital, together with a dele- 
gation or a representation from what may be called the 
great public. That Executive Committee will be a per- 
manent body ready to take up any question of national 
importance between capital and labor wherever and 
whenever it may arise. That body, being permanent, 
can be called into action at any moment and will be rep- 
resentative of all the interests involved, one that is not 
appointed for any special occasion but appointed for 
all occasions. And I think when that committee is 
selected it w^ill be seen that it will be representative in 
the largeness of the interests it stands for and the brains 
that represent those large interests. 

I shall now ask Mr. John Phillips, the Secretary of 
the National Hatters* Union, to address us. I know 
Mr. Phillips is averse to speaking in public, but I am 
sure upon an occasion like this he will give us the benefit 



24 INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION. 

of his thoughts upon the subjects with which he is con- 
versant. I call upon Mr. John Phillips. 

Mr. John Phillips: Mr. Chairman and gentlemen — 
Unfortunately for me and also for you, the elements 
have conspired to prevent the attendance of the promi- 
nent labor leaders. I am not a prominent labor leader by 
any means. I wish to tell you that in advance. And 
if the prominent labor leaders were here, I would not be 
called on to say a word. (Laughter.) Your Secretary 
came here and asked me to say a word on the labor side 
of the question. I made no preparation to speak here; 
I came to listen — sent here by the National Executive 
Board of the United Hatters of North America to repre- 
sent them at this meeting. 

Having been a member of Bishop Potter's Board of 
Mediation and Conciliation for years, I feel that I am 
at home in a meeting where mediation, conciliation, 
and arbitration are to be the ruling subjects. Bishop 
Potter's Board of Mediation and Conciliation seems to 
have fallen into what a distinguished gentleman at one 
time described as **innocuous desuetude.'' But I like 
to be where mediation, conciliation, and arbitration are 
to be talked of. 

The organization to which I belong believes firmly in 
mediation and arbitration and conciliation. They are 
totally averse to strikes, totally averse to men quitting 
their work at any time for any cause, be it trivial or 
serious. They believe in having small committees in 
shops and in districts to settle the troubles, and keep 
the men at work. There is nothing gained by the men 
quitting their work, we believe. (Applause.) 

We have a system in our trade that when trouble 
occurs in any factory, the men stay at their work. 



INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION, 25 

There is a committee of three in the factory who take up 
the question, and they go off by themselves and take the 
testimony of the men, and then they hear the manufac- 
turer's side of the question, and they settle the trouble. 
The men keep on with their work and earn their money, 
instead of going out on strike. (Applause.) We have 
educated our people up to the standard that they must 
not quit their work on any pretext, and a strike cannot 
take place unless by the consent of the General Execu- 
tive Board, consisting of the four executive officers, and 
until they meet and investigate the matter no man is 
allowed to quit his work. 

We find this a great improvement on the old system 
of quitting work. All troubles must be referred to the 
Shop Committee, and if they cannot settle with the em- 
ployer they then call in the Local Executive Board, 
which consists of four officers of the Local Association, 
and if they cannot settle the matter it is referred to the 
National Executive Board, and their decision is final. 
We very seldom have a strike. It is a last resort, as our 
National Executive Board will not permit a strike unless 
all other means fail. 

We make contracts with our employers about every six 
months. We arrange our wages for the ensuing six 
months. The manufacturer then knows what he has to 
pay for his work. That contract is signed by a com- 
mittee of the men employed at the factory, and the 
manufacturer puts his name to it, and when that is 
tacked up on the wall its provisions stand until the date 
expires. No man can break it on either side. We be- 
lieve in living up to our contracts at all hazards. 

There was a manufacturer in our trade in this city, 
Mr. Robert Dunlap, who, I am sorry, is now dead. If 



26 INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION. 

all the manufacturers in our trade had been like him we 
would not have needed any hatters* union. (Applause.) 
We would not need any labor organizations at all in our 
trade. He told me on one occasion that he would never 
have arbitration in his factory. I quote his exact words, 
as far as I can remember. 

**If I have any trouble in my factory and I cannot settle it in 
about fifteen minutes, with a committee of three level-headed men, 
I will give up the business. If we sit down and we mean business, 
and mean to treat each other fairly and honestly and justly, we will 
settle our troubles inside of fifteen minutes." 

And it is true. He could do it. He could talk to the 
men, and there would be a giving way on both sides, and 
the angles and the sharp corners would be rounded off, 
and by and by it would come out all right. (Laugh- 
ter.) Any other way is no use, in the opinion of the 
trade I represent. We sit down with the employers on 
terms of equality, and talk our troubles over, and if an 
employer wants to make a contract for two or three years 
we will make it, if it is a good one, because we know after 
we sign that contract we will have peace in that factory 
for two or three years. And that is what we want, peace 
and fraternity and good feeling. 

Before I sit down I want to say something, which 
it would be criminal for me to leave the room without 
saying. I always had an opinion that Senator Hanna 
was antagonistic to organized labor. (Laughter.) I 
received a communication the other day from a Mc- 
Kinley Memorial Committee in reference to a subscrip- 
tion for a monument, and I wrote back to the person 
from whom I received it, that I would lay the matter 
before the General Executive Board, but I said, **I 



INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION, 2/ 

regret very much that on your list of trustees I find some 
enemies of organized labor/' I also said, **I regret to 
say that 1 find on your printed matter there is no label 
of the Printers* Union, and I can't recognize it on that 
account.** I had Senator Hanna in mind, when I wrote 
that letter, as one of the enemies of organized labor. 
(Laughter.) 

Now, Mr. Chairman and gentlemen, I am always open 
to conviction. I am always pleased to be set right when 
I am wrong. I was astonished to hear Senator Hanna 
say what he did, and hereafter I will have a different 
opinion of him. (Applause.) I listened with pleasure 
to his remarks; he spoke with sincerity, and I am willing 
at any time to join hands with anybody and everybody 
who is striving for industrial peace. 

Apologizing for my crude and disconnected remarks, 
and hoping that some prominent labor advocates will be 
heard later on, I close by thanking you for your atten- 
tion. (Applause.) 

Mr. Straus: Gentlemen, the last speaker needs no 
comment. He is his own eloquent commentator, and 
we thank him for the wisdom that he has given us. 

We have here several important representatives of 
labor and I think that nothing has been more damaging 
to the hat trade or to the wearers of hats than the prod- 
ucts of the business that is represented by the gentleman 
upon whom I will next call. I will call upon the Pres- 
ident of the New York Bricklayers* Association (laugh- 
ter), Mr. John J. Donnelly. 

Mr. John J. Donnelly: I want to say to you I have 
to make almost the same statement that my friend Mr 
Phillips made, although he is connected with a different 



28 INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION. 

class of business altogether that does not come in contact 
or connection with us; I say for the members of the 
organization I represent that at any time they attempt to 
buy a hat they always take particular care to look at the 
band inside and see that it has the hatters* union label. 

Some seventeen or eighteen years ago in this large city 
the bricklayers were similar to quite a number of other 
trades. They would leave their tools on the scaffold or 
put them in the tool-house at six o'clock in the evening, 
go to their homes, come out the next morning, and they 
didn't know whether they would go to work or not. 
Strife existed between the members of the organization 
and the individual employers, who were not banded to- 
gether at that time, as the Mason Builders' Association of 
New York City has since become. One of the greatest 
strikes, I think, that ever occurred in this town was on 
the 2ist of July, 1884. That strike lasted nine months. 
It lasted six months before we made an effort to call a 
conference. I am very happy and proud to say that for 
sixteen years the Mason Builders of this city and the 
Bricklayers' Union have stood as one body, intact. No 
strikes have ever taken place, whether for the most trivial 
question or the most important, until last spring. There 
was a misunderstanding relative to a certain building 
now being erected and not quite finished in this town, 
and that nearly culminated in a general strike and a 
lockout. In fact there was a lockout started but some 
of the wise heads nipped it in the bud before it went ten 
days. The feeling to-day between the Mason Builders 
and the Bricklayers' Union of this city is just the same 
as it has been for the last seventeen years. 

I want to state that as far as our organization is con- 
cerned we have benefited considerably by arbitration, 



INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION, 29 

and as long as there is a Bricklayers' Union in this city 
and I have anything to do in connection with it I will 
always try to have that relation maintained. I have 
never done anything but look after the interests of the 
employer as well as the employee during the eleven 
years that I have been associated with the body. I 
hope that every man who attends this conference who 
is not at peace with his employer will take heed from 
these proceedings, and make good will prevail. (Ap- 
plause.) 

Mr. Straus: We thank Mr. Donnelly for his remarks. 

Gentlemen, the more we hear upcn this subject the 
more we find that a large portion of the difficulties results 
from misunderstandings. There is Mr. Phillips, who has 
just informed us of his misunderstanding as to the posi- 
tion of Mark Hanna. Now here is Mr. Donnelly who 
informs us that the only difficulty that has arisen for a 
long time between the masons and the bricklayers was 
also largely the result of a misunderstanding. That is 
what we are here for, to clear away these misunder- 
standings. 

I have the pleasure of calling next upon Mr. James 
Ryan, the Vice-President of the New York State Federa- 
tion of Labor, and the sixth Vice-President of the Typo- 
graphical Union. 

Mr. James Ryan: I feel it a great privilege to have 
the opportunity of addressing such a body of gentlemen 
as are here this morning, employers and clergymen, and 
high dignitaries of the church. I am glad to hear the 
sentiments expressed of harmony and good will — not only 
expressed but echoed by applause. 

I must say that Mr. Mark Hanna by his remarks to-day 



30 INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION. 

will go far to promote good feeling between working 
men's organizations and their employers, will go farther 
than any sentiments we have heard during the period of 
fifty years in our experience with union labor (applause). 
I will show you the difference between this meeting and 
meetings I attended fifty years ago when I first joined a 
trade-union. Then I was invited to hear men talk who 
would tell us what we were. And there was a vast dif- 
ference in the sentiments. We are up against practical 
men now, and these gentlemen who have spoken this 
morning are desirous and anxious, without bringing in 
scientific problems to bear upon the matter, to see labor 
and capital get together. Let me give you a sample of 
the advice that was given us at that time. Professor 
Collins, of Oxford: 

** You have no right to be outside the gates of your factory wait- 
ing for the bell to ring to take you inside. You be at your work 
bench when the bell rings and prepared to go on with your work. 
And while you are at your work produce all you can. Produce it as 
well as you can and as much as you can. Don't waste your time 
watching the clock. Don't turn your heads around to look at the 
clock to see how the time is going. When the time is to quit your 
employer knows that better than you and he will arrange things, he 
will communicate the time to quit ; and don't be in too much of a 
hurry to quit then. When you meet outside to talk over things, 
don't discuss your hours of labor and your wages, what they should 
be. Your employer understands the markets and he knows them 
better than you do, and if you leave the hours of labor and the wages 
to your employer he knows how much he can afford to pay you, 
and it is much better to do that than to form combinations.'* 

We objected to that pabulum. We told our employers 
that we considered the business could afford to pay bet- 
ter wages than we were receiving. The next was a man 
who ran a printing-office in London. When I first went 



INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION. 3 1 

to work for him they had two hand presses. Now they 
have twenty-two steam presses. I was a steam printer. 
And I was deputized to go to him and ask him to give us 
nine hours' work without reduction of pay. He said to 
me: **Can you give me any good reason why I should pay 
you ten hours for nine hours' work. ** **Yes, sir, I believe 
lean." ** Let me hear it.** ** The profit you make out 
of the business; you can afford to pay that.'* ** What 
has my profit to do with you ? *' ** Very much. When I 
worked for you before you had two hand presses. You 
have now twenty-two steam presses and many hundred 
people at work when you had only nine or ten. You 
never made that out of your losses. You made it out of 
your profits.*' He gave in to us. On the other hand, I 
call your attention to the advancement which will accrue 
to industry from the co-operation of the laborers and the 
capitalists, the employers here to-day, and I wish to echo 
the sentiments expressed by Mr. Mark Hanna. You 
will socially improve, you will come together in harmony, 
and that is more than any other improvement, more than 
any other ism. I contend that trade-unionism has raised 
working men more than any other institution in the world. 
If we have fought with employers we have worked hand 
in hand with them. I have always objected to the lazy 
man. Our union is based, as Mr. Phillips has told you, 
upon a workman keeping his contract. If a man gives me 
one dollar a day or five dollars a day and I have agreed 
to take it I am bound to work for that to the best of my 
ability. But I have a right to try to get twenty-five if I 
can. 

But the sentiments of Mark Hanna in closing his ad- 
dress have been mine all through life. The more we 
unite and combine our efforts the sooner we reach the 



32 INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION. 

higher plane of society. This is an effort in the right 
direction ; it will improve us socially and morally. (Ap- 
plause.) 

Mr. Straus: Gentlemen, we have in this room prob- 
ably — and I think I may leave off the word **probably " — 
the greatest example of rise from the ranks of labor to 
the ranks of employer of labor in this country, and per- 
haps in any other country, and I am going to call upon 
him, as he is a man in touch, has been in touch, and, I 
have no doubt, his heart is still in touch with the ranks 
of labor from the very bottom to the very top, and with 
every rank of the employer of labor from the smallest to 
the very largest. I shall call upon Mr. Charles M. 
Schwab, the President of the United States Steel 
Corporation, for some remarks. 

Mr. Charles M. Schwab: Mr. President and gen- 
tlemen — In coming here this morning it was with no in- 
tention to make any remarks. My attitude upon the 
labor question is too well known to need any discussion 
here. But I did come here, as Bishop Potter well ex- 
presses it, to see the other side of the shield if I can. 
Any man who is as largely and as deeply interested in 
labor as I am must try to see the other side of the shield, 
to see the question of labor from the employees' as well 
as the employers* point of view, and I am here for that 
purpose this morning. I am here with a mind open to 
conviction, with a mind to receive anything that is fair, 
with a mind to do that which is fair to bring about har- 
mony between capital and labor. (Applause.) 

It is a selfish motive in a way. I realize that the pros- 
perity of the United States is going to advance more 
rapidly. It is bound to advance at any rate. But it is 



INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION. 33 

going to advance much more rapidly when this happy- 
solution has been reached. The decadence of trade in 
many of the old countries is due, as I expressed it to a 
large body of English labor people and manufacturers a 
short time ago, primarily of all things to the attitude 
which labor has taken with reference to capital. It is 
the most important thing with reference to the loss of 
trade in Great Britain to-day. I think all economists 
writing on this subject will agree to that. I don't mean 
to say that employers have not been arbitrary and radical. 
They have. On the other hand, I think that labor has 
been just as arbitrary and radical. And it is to remedy 
and conciliate these differences that we ought to get 
together. 

There is one point that I want to impress upon you. 
I am not going to make a speech. I can do better 
probably when it comes to giving ideas to this confer- 
ence rather than talk about theories. But there is one 
point we must bear in mind, — that labor unions will 
never succeed, as trusts never succeeded, that attempt 
to restrict the output or attempt to put any restriction 
upon trade in general. These great trusts that are 
formed in a business way to control the output of any 
commodity, to raise its price, all have failed and all 
will fail. A trust will succeed where there are motives 
of consolidation for economy's sake and for regulating 
trade generally. And the laborer must take a similar 
position. Labor must not restrict the output. That is 
a fundamental principle. And I am sorry to say that 
every labor organization with which I have had experi- 
ence in the past has had as its foundation the restriction 
of the output. It is that principle which is putting Eng- 
lish commerce and English trade in the bad position 



34 INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION. 

in which they are to-day; and we owe it to America's 
greatness in commerce that these great business aggre- 
gations do not become trusts and that the labor unions 
do not become a trust of time and output. 

I hope that this conference will result in good. I have 
said more than I expected to say. I shall speak frankly 
whenever I do speak. I am opposed to labor organiza- 
tion as it is to-day organized. I am sorry I did not have 
Mr. Phillips and such gentlemen to deal with. I think 
that only good will come from a frank and naked discus- 
sion of the truth and therefore I give you these views. 
I should not be opposed to organized labor if organized 
on correct principles. It is a mistaken idea to suppose 
that manufacturers are opposed to labor unions per se. 
They are opposed to them as they do exist, not with 
labor organizations who keep their contracts, not with 
labor organizations who will not restrict the output, not 
with labor organizations who have the good of the trade 
they represent at heart. 

I have spoken frankly, I hope not offensively. I come 
here to be convinced of anything that will result to the 
good of the workmen and their employers, because their 
fortunes and their prosperity are mutual and must stand 
together. (Applause.) 

Mr. Straus: I am sure we are all thankful for the 
frankness of Mr. Schwab. I can say that he, like all the 
other speakers here to-day, has spoken upon the spur of 
the moment and I trust that he will be with us through- 
out these deliberations, because we want his guidance and 
his wisdom as we want the guidance and the wisdom of 
the great leaders on the other side. 

I shall now call upon a gentleman who has come in 



INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION, 35 

touch with labor in another field. His field has been 
devoted to the guidance and care of the children of 
laborers, the sons and the daughters of laborers in the 
crowded districts of our city, and his name is known to 
you by his works. I call upon Mr. James B. Reynolds, 
the head-worker of the University Settlement of this 
city. 

Mr. James B. Reynolds: Mr. Chairman and gentle- 
men — Senator Hanna, in his remarks, stated that he 
became convinced of the value of labor organizations 
through his experience with a strong labor organization. 
I first became convinced of the value of trade-unions 
through my contact with a weak organization. This 
weakness taught me to see how many of the misfortunes 
of its members might be overcome if the organization 
were stronger. I have since come to test the intel- 
ligence of a trade by seeing whether the workmen in that 
trade were well and strongly organized or not. If they 
were strongly organized, the workmen were able and 
usually disposed to keep their contracts, as they would 
not if the organization were weak. In other words, the 
strong organization is not only the organization which 
contributes most to its members, but it is the one with 
which the employer can most advantageously deal. The 
strike is usually the sign of a weak organization. Strong 
organizations attain their ends by the pressure of their 
strength and the respect which that strength commands 
from their opponents. It enables them to meet their 
opponents on equal terms, and their own desire not to 
injure their prestige or deplete their carefully accumu- 
lated resources makes such an organization conservative 
and reasonable. 

It has been stated this morning that misunderstandings 



36 INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION. 

account for most of the difficulties which provoke labor 
disputes. I believe this statement to be true. 

The most fruitful cause of misunderstandings is sepa- 
ration. If the right parties could come together at the 
right time, nine out of ten strikes would be averted. I 
understand that the object of this organization is to bring 
the right parties together at the right time. The right 
time for us is the time preceding the acute difficulties. 
The success of our efforts must depend upon our wisdom 
in anticipating the acute stage of the difficulties which 
we attempt to adjust. 

One position occupied by laboring men is, in my mind, 
strangely misunderstood by employers as a class. I called 
once upon one of the largest employers of this city, and 
he said to me, **No one needs to come to see me about 
my men. I am always ready to see my men myself." I 
asked him to whom a complaint presented by one of his 
men would be referred for investigation. He replied, 
** To the manager of the division in which the complain- 
ant labors." I said, **Is not the manager the immediate 
superintendent of that employee, and would it not be a 
criticism of the manager if you were to sustain the com- 
plaint ? " He replied that it would. I then said, **Can 
you not see that it is not wise for the man to complain 
to you of his immediate superior, with whom it is neces- 
sary for him to keep on good terms ? You may treat his 
complaint favorably and remedy his misfortune, but six 
months later you will not understand why your manager 
will say to you that this man is a troublesome fellow and 
that you had better get rid of him, but the laborer knows 
what will happen in such a case and will not if he can 
help it plan for his discharge by offending his immediate 
supervisor. ' ' 



INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION-, 37 

It is a curious fact that while labor, realizing its needs, 
has organized and secured its regular representatives, 
capital has not yet met labor with proper representatives. 
Capital needs organization as much as labor. In the 
garment-making trade, with which I am somewhat 
familiar, the exciting cause of labor difficulties, and one 
of the most frequent obstacles in the settlement of such 
difficulties, is the lack of organization of the employers. 
The greatest need of capital therefore, in my opinion, if 
it be seeking to promote industrial peace, is, first, organi- 
zation, and, second, the procurement of proper represen- 
tatives. I suppose that capital would object to having a 
representative who might be called a '* walking delegate," 
but if it were to have a representative graced by the title 
of adjuster, whose business it should be to * 'scent danger 
from afar," know when to recommend just concessions, 
and how to demonstrate the impossibility of other con- 
cessions to the satisfaction of reasonable representatives 
of labor, an immense contribution would be made to 
industrial peace. 

The development of the wise and just adjuster then is 
my final suggestion for the consideration of this gathering. 

Mr. Straus: I will call upon one more gentleman 
before we adjourn our session of to-day, and I wish to 
repeat that when we do adjourn we adjourn to half-past 
ten o'clock to-morrow morning, and I wish to say that we 
propose to effect a practical working machinery for pro- 
moting some of the objects spoken of here to-day. I call 
upon Mr. Marcus M. Marks, President of the National 
Clothiers' Association. 

Mr. Marcus M. Marks: Mr. Chairman and gentle- 
men — The noble sentiments that have been expressed 



38 INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION. 

to-day are certainly encouraging as a basis for tangible 
work to be accomplished later by active committees. In 
themselves these generalities, noble though they may be, 
accomplish little beyond providing an atmosphere for the 
proper development of practical effort. Theoretically, 
our problem is solved before we begin to consider it. 
There is no question at all that labor and capital mean 
well toward each other. The general sentiment among 
manufacturers is that their laboring men should live in 
a proper way, have good wages and reasonably short 
hours, for their own sakes and for their employers' best 
interests. On the other hand, I feel sure that most 
laboring men mean to serve their employers as well as 
they can for the best interests of the trade. But mis- 
understandings bring about the conflict. 

If the shield is gold on one side as viewed by the em- 
ployer, and silver on the other side as viewed by the 
employee, it should be the province of this convention 
to appoint an executive committee so broad that it can 
see both sides of the shield clearly and fairly and 
harmonize the points of view. For the difference is 
principally imaginary and depends upon the color of the 
glass one looks through. What is good for the employee 
is good for the employer, and vice versa. However, the 
limitation of what a good bright workman should do in 
the allotted working hours of a day by a rule which 
brings him down to the level of the slow or even the 
average workman, does harm in both directions. It 
keeps the superior workman from developing into an 
employer, and puts a damper on his proper ambition. 
We should encourage the best among employees to raise 
themselves from the ranks and become employers them- 
selves. (Applause.) 



INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION, 39 

One of the speakers said that the labor problem must 
be solved at once, and once for all. I maintain that it 
never will be solved, and never should be solved, except 
by evolution. There should always be the hope for 
better things for the workman, his constant improvement 
and elevation. It will be the work of a lifetime of Sena- 
tor Hanna and his associates, by keeping in touch with 
labor and capital, to endeavor to harmonize differences, 
and viewing the situation without prejudice, to point out 
the fair and the right. It will require coolness, courage, 
and patience. (Applause.) 

Mr. Straus: Gentlemen, I thank you for your at- 
tendance this morning, and bespeak your further attend- 
ance. The session of this morning is adjourned. 

Continued Meeting, Tuesday, December 17, 1901, 

AT 10.30 A.M. 

Mr. Straus: Gentlemen of the conference, or, to 
borrow a phrase from a simile of the eloquent address 
of Bishop Potter of yesterday, may I say, knights 
of the gold and knights of the silver shield, may the 
knights of each side see the other side. I think I 
cannot begin this second session of this conference with 
a better omen or with better ideas than are contained in 
the few words taken from the message of President 
Roosevelt, which I will now read: **When all is said and 
done, the power of brotherhood remains as the indis- 
pensable prerequisite to success in the kind of national 
life for which we strive.*' 

I shall not detain you with any remarks of my own be- 
cause there are men here who are in touch with the great 
problems that we have before us and who will speak not 



40 INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION. 

only from knowledge but from an intimate experience. 
I shall have the pleasure of calling upon a gentleman 
who has made a careful study under the supervision of 
the Government of the United States of these problems, 
a man who is known to you by his excellent work in that 
field. I shall call upon Mr. E. D. Durand, Secretary of 
the United States Industrial Commission. 

Mr. E. D. Durand: Gentlemen — I cannot claim 
exactly to be a knight of the golden shield, since un- 
fortunately I am not a capitalist, and I do not know but 
some of my good friends of the American Federation of 
Labor might deny to me the right even to be a knight 
of the silver shield, claiming that I am not a working 
man. But I am interested in these problems which the 
working men and the capitalists, the employers and the 
employees, have to face, and I am connected with a 
body, the United States Industrial Commission, which 
has taken a profound interest in this subject of the 
means of promoting industrial peace, and has given as 
much attention to it in its various investigations as to 
almost any other single subject. 

Some of the publications of the Commission may be 
of interest to those who are anxious to know further de- 
tails with reference to existing methods of adjusting the 
relations between employers and employees. The Com- 
mission has had before it representatives of a great many 
of the labor organizations and the organizations of capital 
which have been most successful in their dealings with 
one another and in preventing strikes and lockouts. It 
has also collected in one volume the published material 
of these various organizations relating to their means of 
securing peaceful relations. Copies of many industrial 
agreements fixing the conditions of labor have been 



INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION. 4I 

obtained, and a very large amount of information has 
been published/ 

Two or three general conclusions seem to grow out of 
the facts thus collected, as to the best methods which can 
be employed for adjusting the relations of employers and 
employees. I think one of the most fundamental things 
which can be borne in mind is a recognition of the dis- 
tinction between the two great classes of disputes or 
differences which have to be adjusted. The one class 
has to do with general matters, the other with specific 
and less important matters. The one has to do with the 
general terms of the labor contract, with the rate of 
wages, the hours, the general conditions under which 
the work shall be performed. Disputes of the other 
class are specific and temporary; they are largely differ- 
ences of interpretation as to the labor contract; they 
often arise from misunderstandings merely. 

Now, if you recognize these distinct classes of differ- 
ences, you can readily see that in many cases a distinct 
machinery should be provided for settling each class. 
And those systems of ** arbitration," if you please to use 
that word in a very broad sense, which are most success- 
ful in the United States are those which do recognize 
this difference between the classes of disputes. 

The first class of disputes, the general matters, are 
proper subjects for negotiation directly between indi- 
vidual employers, or organizations of employers, and 
organizations of employees; and, in general, for such 
direct negotiation only. They are proper subjects for 
what some people have termed ** collective bargaining." 
Few who have had experience or who have studied 
the subject believe that, unless in the most extreme 
* Reports of the Industrial Commission^ vol. xvii. 



42 INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION, 

instances, these general questions should be decided by 
persons outside of the trade, and unfamiliar with its con- 
ditions. They cannot justly be decided by the arbitrary 
decree of the employer, nor should labor organizations 
dictate without consulting the employer's interest. The 
general labor contract is a thing which both sides must 
agree upon as nearly as possible. Just as two corpora- 
tions which have business matters to settle come together 
and strike a bargain, so in some of the leading industries 
of the country, the great employer or organization of 
employers and the representatives of the employees come 
together, usually once each year, and strike a bargain. 
They negotiate, they meet one another face to face and 
thrash out a compromise. I think no phrase is more 
accurate to describe this practice than ** collective bar- 
gaining." The word ''conciliate " is often used and is 
perhaps fairly satisfactory. Certainly it is not arbitration 
in the strict sense. One often hears employers and em- 
ployees alike say they are opposed to arbitration. When 
the statement is sounded it is usually found that they are 
merely opposed to calling in any one not directly con- 
cerned, perhaps entirely outside of the trade, to decide 
the question, and they are not opposed to negotiations 
directly between the interested parties. Sometimes in a 
particular strike you hear there is a refusal to arbitrate. 
That means generally a refusal to call in somebody from 
the outside. A refusal on the part of fair-minded em- 
ployers and employees to get together and negotiate is 
much less common. 

Collective bargaining then, rather than arbitration 
strictly, is the method by which ordinarily the general 
questions relating to the conditions of labor are most 
satisfactorily settled. By this method employers and 



INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION. 43 

employees in a great many trades in the United States suc- 
ceed in reaching from year to year, or from time to time, 
agreements concerning the conditions of labor. Peace- 
ful, businesslike negotiation, without strikes, without 
lockouts, without the immense losses which often result 
from strikes and lockouts, — that is the thing in a nutshell. 

Let a number of representatives of the two parties in 
interest get together, let them discuss matters frankly and 
in a friendly manner, and after a time — it may be per- 
haps quite a long time — a general agreement is almost 
sure to be reached. Each side comes to understand and 
respect the other; and each hesitates to encounter the 
losses of cessation of employment by being too insistent 
on its demands. 

From the fact that these general questions are best 
settled by a system of bargaining, and not by a system of 
judicial decision and arbitration, it follows that a suc- 
cessful result can be brought about, usually, only where 
you have ultimately a practically unanimous agreement 
of all representatives of both sides as the result of nego- 
tiation. It will not do to get together a half-dozen em- 
ployers and a half-dozen employees, and let them decide 
by bare majority vote what shall be the conditions of 
labor in an entire trade; so that, for example, if one of 
the workmen happens to be over-persuaded to join the 
side of the employers, he can cast the die and determine 
the wages and hours of perhaps thousands of his fellows 
for a year. As a matter of practice that method will not 
work. The two groups representing capital and labor 
ought rather to debate, discuss, work over the terms, 
thresh out the question, until they reach a unanimous 
agreement; and that, as a matter of fact, is the ordinary 
practice in this regard in the United States. 



44 JNDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION. 

The proper scope of a system of collective bargaining, 
its territorial extent, depends largely on the nature of 
the trade concerned. Obviously it is desirable that, so 
far as possible, the conditions of labor shall be made 
approximately uniform over an entire competitive field. 
If the employers of one section of the country are com- 
peting in a common market with the employers of another 
section, it is desirable that the employers and the em- 
ployees of the two sections should meet with one another 
and adjust the conditions of the labor contract on an 
equitable basis; otherwise the employers in one locality 
will perhaps be tempted to cut wages, or otherwise to 
make the conditions of labor worse, in order to meet the 
competition or the fear of competition from another sec- 
tion. The wider the field of competition, the wider 
should be the system of collective bargaining. We find, 
therefore, in a number of trades in the United States, 
national organizations of employers and national organi- 
zations of employees which enter into wide-reaching 
agreements, fixing the most important conditions of 
labor, but leaving the details to be settled locally. On 
the other hand, where, as in the building trades, com- 
petition is largely confined to a single city or small dis- 
trict, local agreements are more customary, and are found 
to work satisfactorily. 

It is obvious that to have success in this system of col- 
lective bargaining there must be organization, — organiza- 
tion on both sides. The necessity of organization to give 
the working men any degree of strength in their dealings 
with employers need not be emphasized before such a 
body as this. There are many representatives of em- 
ployers, moreover, who will insist that one of the chief 
difficulties in the past in bringing about peaceful settle- 



INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION. 45 

ments has been the lack of organized collective action on 
the part of the employers. They have been slower to 
organize than working men. They have often been dis- 
posed to compete with one another, if need be, by 
crowding the workers more closely, rather than to agree 
in adjusting the conditions of labor on an equal basis. 
Strong organization, then, of both employers and em- 
ployees is highly desirable, and becomes absolutely 
essential if the system of collective bargaining is to be 
spread over a large territory. In the absence of such 
organization, thoroughly representative of the trade, the 
agreements reached will not truly represent the great 
body of employers and employees, and competition from 
outside will threaten the very existence of the system. 
Moreover, without strong organization agreements will 
not be effectively carried out, nor be made binding upon 
even the employers and employees who are parties to 
them. 

One other thought grows directly out of a recognition 
of the essential nature of the collective bargaining pro- 
cess. To insure the best results, it is desirable to have a 
comparatively large representation of the parties at 
interest in driving the bargain, provided of course the 
number of employers and employees concerned is large. 
There have been cases where an attempt was made to 
reach an agreement, affecting scores of establishments 
and thousands of men, by negotiations between two or 
three officers on the one side and the other. But such 
attempts seldom succeed very well. Large representa- 
tion of the parties is needed to bring out the real desires, 
the real interests, of the great mass of employers and 
employees who are to be so profoundly affected by the 
agreement. Moreover, if you have a small number of 



46 INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION. 

conferees only, the reasons why the various terms of the 
agreement have been reached are not understood gener- 
ally by all concerned, and dissatisfaction with them is 
likely to arise. Great stress was laid yesterday on the 
thought that a spirit of brotherhood is necessary, and 
also familiarity with the conditions on the one side and 
the other, in order to promote industrial peace. Surely 
nothing could be more helpful in promoting that brother- 
hood and that familiarity than to have a considerable 
number of employers and employees come together from 
time to time and negotiate as to the terms of the labor 
contract. Details of the industrial agreement may be 
referred to smaller committees, but the general relations 
will certainly be more peaceful if meetings of considerable 
size ultimately decide the main questions. In the bitu- 
minous coal industry the joint interstate conference 
consists often of one hundred and fifty employers and 
five hundred on the other side, with a smaller * 'scale 
committee *' which reports to it. After meeting a num- 
ber of days the delegates reach an agreement and 
sepal ate with a great deal of amity, and the friendly at- 
titude and understanding of one another's position which 
those large numbers of men take back to their respective 
localities does very much to prevent violations of the 
agreement and local disputes. 

One word with reference to the differences of the 
second class above distinguished, the minor disputes, 
which in many cases are merely misunderstandings 
that could have been removed if there had been any 
machinery for the employer and employee to get together. 
Those differences ought ordinarily to be settled by a 
different process from that by which the general col- 
lective bargain is reached. To be sure, where a good 



INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION. 47 

system of industrial agreements exists, the minor disputes 
are far less likely to arise; but they will arise occasion- 
ally, and when they do there ought to be machinery 
established and ready so that there can be a prompt and 
peaceful adjustment. Such local shop committees as 
Mr. Phillips has described in the hatters* trade are very 
valuable, certainly, for negotiation between the individual 
employer and the men of the particular shop. To give any 
promise of success in settling such minor difficulties, the 
employer must, of course, be prepared to meet his men 
frankly, and the employees must be ready to confer 
peaceably. Then there may be local committees of 
organizations of employees, and of organizations of em- 
ployers as well, representing the city or the district. 
Joint committees, boards of arbitration as they are 
usually called, are especially desirable, and should pref- 
erably be permanently established. To these boards 
can be appealed differences which cannot be settled by 
the shop committees. Finally, where a national system 
of collective bargaining exists, there may well be joint 
arbitration committees representing the national organi- 
zations. 

Arbitration committees, whether local or national, 
are often, and may properly enough be, empowered to 
render binding decisions, and, if need be, as a last resort, 
to call in some one outside the trade to decide a point at 
issue. This is arbitration proper, a judicial decision, 
essentially different from bargaining. But in general 
such boards will not have to render authoritative deci- 
sions nor to call in outside umpires; they can conciliate, 
mediate, and lead the parties into agreement with refer- 
ence to these minor disputes. In fact, usually, if there 
be a committee of the working men which is regularly 



48 INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION, 

recognized by the employer in a particular shop, a mere 
conciliation directly between them will settle the matter 
in the first instance. 

If then we can have a system of collective bargaining, 
more or less formal, conducted by large committees or 
conferences of employers and employees, supplemented 
by a system of conciliation and arbitration as to the 
minor disputes, each system worked out in proper rela- 
tion to the conditions of the trade, we shall have accom- 
plished a great deal toward promoting industrial peace. 
And I sincerely hope that this conference may result in 
a better understanding of the actual methods which have 
been heretofore so successfully employed in many of the 
trades, and that it may also promote a spirit of harmony 
which will make for the rapid extension of these prac- 
tices. 

Mr. Straus: I shall now have the pleasure of calling 
upon the representative, the chief representative, of an 
industry in which our country has pre-eminently excelled, 
an industry which was first developed here and in which 
we are surpassing perhaps the entire world, so that to-day 
on the banks of the Nile, in the ears of the Sphinx, is 
heard the sound of this industry — I mean the locomotive. 
I shall call upon the gentleman who represents a section 
of that trade as the Grand Master of its Brotherhood, and 
who represents also a million workers in that sphere 
of labor. I call upon Mr. Frank P. Sargent, Grand 
Master of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen, from 
Peoria, 111. 

Mr. Frank P. Sargent: Mr. Chairman and gentle- 
men of the conference — I regret that it was not my 
privilege to be with you yesterday and listen to the very 



INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION, 49 

able addresses that were made by the representatives of 
capital, men high in official station, and those who have 
made for many years a study of economics. But un- 
fortunately I was subject to the elements, confined in 
the Adirondacks, and unable to escape. I however was 
privileged last night after my arrival to read the extended 
report given by the press of New York, and there to gather 
some knowledge of the doings of yesterday's session. 

To me this is a most pleasant occasion when repre- 
sentatives of capital and of toil may sit down together 
and dispassionately discuss one of the greatest topics that 
presents itself to-day to the American people. I believe 
that in this meeting every one is privileged to express his 
honest convictions, and that by so doing he will not 
engender any ill-will, but rather gain respect, because 
he who has convictions and is fearless in the expression 
of them we cannot help but admire, even though we may 
disagree with him. It becomes us, if in opposition to 
the declaration made, to try by logical argument to 
convince our opponent of the error of his judgment 
and to win him over if we can. Hence, as I read the 
report of yesterday's session and learn of the expression 
of a distinguished representative of capital who passes 
some severe criticism upon the present methods of the 
organizations of labor, I do not lose any respect for the 
gentleman. I rather admire him for his frankness. It 
then becomes our duty in speaking of labor to try to 
convince him that he is misinformed, that he has not 
drawn the correct conclusions, that organized labor in its 
many ramifications to-day is not a menace to capital, is 
not in defiance of the law, but rather is one of the strong 
influences that is at work to maintain one of the grandest 
republics the world ever saw. (Applause.) 



50 INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION. 

Out of a meeting of this character can only come great 
good, not alone to the man who toils and by the sweat of 
his brow earns a livelihood for himself and his little ones, 
but for all our people and our country's welfare, if we are 
true to ourselves and the interests we hold dear. Hence, 
as I see this body gathered here this morning, and 
as I recognize in this throng men eminent, influential, 
and learned, as well as those whose daily life takes them 
among the toilers of our land, who live as they live, I 
cannot help but believe that we are beginning a work 
here that will prove more beneficial to the interests of our 
country than any work that has ever been begun in all 
the years of our existence. (Applause.) Why? Be- 
cause we are about to put ourselves in a position to 
understand each other, and understand each other aright. 
We are taking down the barriers that have seemingly 
existed between us, and we are privileged to touch 
elbows, and to feel the thrill of brotherhood as it passes 
from mind to mind and hand to hand. We are privileged 
to learn more of the true relations which should exist be- 
tween us, and by virtue of these associations, the people 
who go to make up our republic must of necessity be 
benefited. The trouble has been in the past that labor 
and capital have not been understood and their relations 
have not been properly defined. 

Here this morning in my presence are the men who 
control capital. Right alongside of them sit the men 
who make it, create it. Without the hand of toil there 
would be no capital. Its creator is the man who works 
at the pick, at the scoop, or in the different trades of our 
nation. The man who controls it after it is thus created 
may be classed as the capitalist. But both are depend- 
ent upon each other. I care not how much wealth a man 



INDUSTRIAL CONCILIA! ION. 5 1 

may have, I care not what his influence may be, unless 
he has means to use that wealth, unless that capital 
which he has in his control can be put into circulation 
and utilized, what benefit is it to him ? By virtue of the 
fact that there are avenues of trade through which that 
capital may circulate, that there are thousands upon 
thousands of men ready to use their hands as well as 
their brains in the investment of that capital, in the 
manufacturing industries, the railroad development, and 
all other great enterprises of which we are so proud, his 
capital becomes a benefit to him. 

Therefore, I maintain that the true relation between 
the man who works with his hands as a toiler and the 
man who manipulates the finances is evident in their 
dependency one upon another. The distinguished 
gentleman who spoke from the platform yesterday, con- 
trolling as he does millions, must not forget the fact that 
were it not for the hand of toil at the furnaces and in 
the mines and shops and mills of the country, he would 
have very little to control or manipulate. (Applause.) 
Those things should not be forgotten. Hence, I place 
a high estimate on this convention, because it gives 
opportunity for understandings. 

Organized labor in this country is no new introduc- 
tion, no new institution. We have had organized labor 
for many years, and its influences have been seen and 
felt. I am but a novice in the labor movement, but my 
observations have convinced me that there are organiza- 
tions of labor that are helpful, beneficial, and should be 
encouraged, and, thank God, they are encouraged by 
some of the broadest and most liberal men that this coun- 
try has to-day in charge of its greatest commercial 
industries. I can speak particularly of the locomotive 



52 INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION, 

firemen of this country, who, in 1873, in the discharge 
of their duty upon the locomotive, earned the princely 
sum of thirty-two dollars a month. There was no organ- 
ization then. A fireman was privileged to work at the 
wages which were specified, so long as he desired to do so, 
or so long as his employer would give him the opportunity, 
but so far as having any privileges or rights such as he 
enjoys to-day, he did not. Organization came, not for 
the purpose of presuming to take control of the industry 
which he represented, but for the purpose of bringing 
into a solid community the interests represented, teach- 
ing locomotive firemen first that they should respect 
themselves, that they should be honest, upright, and 
reliable. When that fact had been established and 
the organization which represented their interests had 
shown to their employers that their purposes were sin- 
cere, that there was no hypocrisy hidden beneath their 
organization, but that its aim was to elevate themselves, 
to protect their families, and to advance their wages, they 
did not hesitate to grant recognition, and there was no 
hesitancy in seeking it. To-day the forty thousand loco- 
motive firemen of this country who owe allegiance to the 
Brotherhood which represents their interests are enjoy- 
ing a salary of more than double what they did in 1873; 
and I can point you to the personnel of the men of that 
calling the country over, with the responsible duties 
which they honorably discharge, and you can see for 
yourselves the influence of organization in that branch 
of labor. 

To-day the locomotive firemen maintain the same 
principles of organization that they did when they first 
laid its foundation. They believe in giving a fair day's 
work for a fair day's pay, in discharging every re- 



INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION, 53 

sponsibility that rests upon them, with an eye single to 
the success of their employer and themselves, believing 
that when they have done this they can stand on their 
feet, hold their heads erect, and consider themselves the 
peers of any man ; and so they are if they are honest. 
(Applause.) They have no hesitancy in believing and 
declaring that there are great responsibilities resting 
upon the man who shovels the coal. They also realize 
that their employer has certain rights which they are 
bound to respect. Hence years ago they adopted the 
policy of sitting down and reasoning with their employer 
upon all matters that affected their interests. By virtue 
of that policy, upon nearly every railroad of the 
American continent to-day are mutual agreements exist- 
ing between the firemen and the operating officers of the 
railroad company wherein their wages are specified, 
the number of hours which they shall be employed are 
designated, their rights and privileges are set forth; and 
above all else they hold sacred these agreements, and 
they believe that it is their bounden duty at all times to 
keep them in good faith with their employer. (Applause. ) 
Such has been the policy of the locomotive firemen, 
and such it is to-day. We realize, however, that in an 
organization like ours mistakes are sometimes made. 
Men sometimes become unreasonable in their demands. 
They imagine that there are grievances hard to bear, 
which, if they were permitted to exercise their own 
privileges, their own desires, might lead them into 
serious difficulty. It is the purpose of the Brotherhood 
to so educate its members that when a man feels that he 
has a grievance against his employer he shall first en- 
deavor to adjust his grievance with the officers in im- 
mediate charge. If he fails, he then calls upon his 



54 INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION. 

organization, and it becomes the duty of the committee, 
which exists on each system of railroads where the organ- 
ization exerts its influence, to go to the operating officer 
and there endeavor, not by threat, not by demand, but 
by a conciliatory policy, to try to convince the gentleman 
that an injustice has been done, and by the influence of 
the organization to bring about such an understanding 
that the fireman's interests may be protected and the 
organization thereby advanced in the estimation of the 
managing officer of the corporation. The Brotherhood 
holds in reserve, as every organization of labor should, the 
right to resist oppression, to crush wrong, when reason 
will not prevail. The Brotherhood of Locomotive Fire- 
men does not want it understood that it always bends the 
knee and bows the head to the edict of the one man in 
authority. Never. It has a certain amount of inde- 
pendence which at the proper time and place it tries to 
assert. But the history of the labor movement, and 
especially the history of the Brotherhood of Locomotive 
Firemen, will show for itself how many times it has been 
necessary to assert that independence. We have found 
in dealing with the representatives of capital on rail- 
roads, that if you go to the man in the right way, not 
with a club sticking out of your pocket, or with a chip 
on your shoulder, indicating that you would like to 
have it knocked off first, and if you approach him in a 
businesslike way, giving him to understand what you have 
to present, and that you know the merits of your case, 
that you are not presuming to induce him to do some- 
thing that is radically wrong, that you have come to pre- 
sent to him a proposition backed up by reason, by facts, 
by figures, and by virtue of the strong influence which 
you command, you are going to win him over to your 



INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION. 55 

way of thinking, or at least you are going to come some- 
where near reaching conclusions that will be satisfactory. 

That is the policy which locomotive firemen pursue. 
We believe to-day that if the representatives of capital, 
I don't care what position they may occupy or how 
many millions they have at their command, will adopt 
the same policy that prevails here this morning, which 
is so well represented in the minds and thoughts of the 
men assembled, when these questions arise that affect 
the interests of both labor and capital; that if, instead 
of standing at a distance and calling one another names, 
they come together and sit down as you gentlemen have 
sat down here to hear both sides of the question and 
to form your conclusions upon facts and good logical 
argument, industrial peace will come quickly. (Ap- 
plause.) 

I have just returned from Montreal. The Canadian 
Pacific Railway employs quite a number of firemen. 
Wages in Canada are not quite so high as they are in the 
United States. Although I have listened to the argu- 
ments presented by the gentleman from the Dominion 
making comparisons upon our condition over here, he 
did n't win me over to the idea that I would be better 
off if I lived in Canada, with all respect to Canada and 
its great industries. When we arrived in Montreal we 
found the representatives of our organization, the com- 
mittee in the employ of the Canadian Pacific, and the 
officers, at a standstill. Firemen were asking for more 
pay. That was our business (laughter); and it is going 
to continue to be our business as long as locomotives 
grow larger, trains grow heavier, and the hardships put 
upon the firemen are greater. (Laughter.) Of course, 
being over there on that business, I did not hesitate to 



56 INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION, 

use influence to have the Canadian Pacific unlock its 
treasury and dispense a little of its surplus earnings. 
The conference lasted from Wednesday morning until 
Saturday night. At the close of the conference on 
Saturday night an agreement was signed wherein the 
firemen were advanced nearly ten cents a day on every 
locomotive on the division that the committee was rep- 
resenting. (Applause.) But what to my mind was more 
valuable than the ten cents is the fact that when the 
conference concluded, the men on the one side and the 
representatives of the company on the other were well sat- 
isfied. There was good feeling prevailing, and everybody 
has gone to take up his scoop with renewed energy, and 
wait for the time to go and get some more. (Laughter.) 
Now, it took four days to bring that about. It re- 
quired an argument. In the first place, the officers of 
the Canadian Pacific began to tell us that firemen were 
not entitled to any more pay. Why .? Because they 
were paying the going wages of the market. I had to 
admit it. The going wages of the market, however, 
were not high enough to recompense the men who did 
the work and bought the beefsteak at the increased prices 
in Canada, as living has gone up in Canada as well as in 
our own progressive country. We set about to convince 
the gentlemen that the firemen were entitled to more 
pay because they were doing more work and by virtue of 
the increased labor should have more for their services. 
They got the ten cents. What conclusion is to be 
reached ? This. That when you go to the representa- 
tives of capital and present a logical argument, putting 
forth the facts, not with a club, or with a threat of your 
influence, although you have got it, but endeavor to 
convince him who represents the corporation on the one 



INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION. 57 

side that the men in his employ by faithful service are 
earning more than they are receiving, very frequently 
you will succeed in adding to the daily compensation of 
the men you represent. Whereas, on the other hand, did 
we go in and lay down a declaration, ** that or nothing," 
and end our arguments there, the possibilities might be 
that we would conclude the conference and results would 
have to be effected in some other way not so pleasant. 
Labor in dealing with capital, and capital in dealing with 
labor, must sit down and reason more than they have 
done in the past. I appreciate the strength of organiza- 
tion. No man need tell me what forty thousand martial 
hosts mean on the grand trunk lines of railway in this 
country, or the influence they wield, or the disaster that 
they might create in this country*s interests if put into 
action. It is not necessary for me, however, if it happens 
to be my fortune to approach the officer of a transcon- 
tinental railway, to first endeavor to impress him that we 
are the whole thing and unless he bends his knee or 
bows his head to our edict the wheels of commerce are 
going to stop. That is not what should be brought for- 
ward first. First, your argument — conclusive, honorable, 
manly, taking no exceptions to the man who seems at 
first to disagree with you, but endeavoring to convince 
him of the error of his judgment, and win him over, 
keeping your strength of influence of organization as a 
reserve force to be brought out when every possible argu- 
ment has been presented for conciliation, for arbitration, 
and then only striking a blow when it is absolutely neces- 
sary to do it, and when the great American public will 
stand supporting labor in its effort to obtain justice. 

Now, my friends, I ask this of you. Give every man 
the right of his opinion, and give him the right to express 



58 INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION, 

it as he conscientiously believes. And when this is done 
you may be wide apart in your views. There may be 
gentlemen in the labor movement to-day wide apart from 
me, but I hope they will be as charitable toward me as I 
will be toward them. If they can convince me that I am 
wrong, if they can lead me to believe that I am following a 
will-o'-the-wisp and will get swamped, I will take the first 
side-track I come to and get into the clear. But so long 
as we differ in opinions let us be closest friends. A 
gentleman who spoke on this platform yesterday after- 
noon, representing the steel industries of this country, 
spoke, no doubt, his honest convictions. He was manly 
enough to declare himself. Now, let us, as representa- 
tives of labor, unite our influence, not by abuse, not by 
attack, but by an effort to convert, as a good man con- 
verts the erring sinner, to win him over by good sound 
argument, to point out to him where he has been misin- 
formed or misled or gone astray, and perhaps by so 
doing you can make of him as strong an advocate of 
labor organizations as you have done of my esteemed 
friend Mark over there. 

Mr. Chairman, I appreciate that there are gentlemen 
here of ability, of knowledge, and understanding of the 
labor movement. I am but a kindergarten pupil, learn- 
ing my lessons from such information as I get here. I 
speak for the forty thousand men who fire the coal into 
the mighty iron horses that transport the commerce over 
this country to-day, a body of men standing true to the 
principles of honest organization, no matter what class 
of labor it represents. There is no aristocracy in the 
organization I represent except the aristocracy of true 
manhood, love of the flag, and obedience to the law, 
(Applause.) 



INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION. 59 

Mr. Straus: The Secretary will read a telegram. 

Mr. Easley: The following telegram has been re- 
ceived from Carroll D. Wright, United States Commis- 
sioner of Labor: 

"Could I be present at the conference to-day, I should strongly 
urge upon it and recommend to it the adoption of the joint com- 
mittee plan, which has been so successful, not only in the United 
States but in Great Britain, in adjusting grievances and avoiding 
strikes. It has been demonstrated to be the most effective means. 
" Carroll D. Wright, Commissioner." 

Mr. Straus: Gentlemen, we have heard from the 
very able chief or Grand Master of the Brotherhood of 
Locomotive Firemen. I am sure you would like to hear 
from another branch of the transportation facilities of 
modern civilization. You remember during our Spanish 
War when the Oregon was ploughing its way from the 
Pacific around the continent to do its magnificent service, 
great doubt was expressed, by those who were not in- 
formed, of the ability of that battleship to perform this 
immense voyage. But those who knew, who knew how 
she was constructed and where she was constructed and 
by whom she was designed, had faith that she would ac- 
complish precisely what she did accomplish. The man 
who designed that noble battleship, the man who, 
perhaps, ranks as the leading naval architect of the 
world for his years, is here to-day. He is not an old 
man. And I have the pleasure of calling upon him to 
address us regarding the industries with which he is 
familiar. I have the pleasure of introducing to you Mr. 
Lewis Nixon. (Applause.) 

Mr. Lewis Nixon: Gentlemen — I did not come here 
to-day to talk. I came here simply to testify by my 



6o INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION, 

presence the great interest which I have, as a man who 
works, in this movement which has come to the front to- 
day. 

I employ a number of men. Four years ago I con- 
cluded on my own initiative that I would try making my 
men union men. And I did so not because they asked 
me to, but because I believed that eventually I should 
accomplish more by doing so. I have as yet no cause 
to regret my action. There are a number of things in 
connection with organized labor that the employer has 
to criticise, but, so far as I can see, the relations of 
organized labor to the employer present far more that is 
good than bad, and they are constantly improving. 

To my mind, the reason of the great industrial and 
commercial development of the United States during 
the past twenty years has been largely the fact that 
the employer in this country works with the men 
who work for him. We are all workers here and all 
have rights. And I feel that now we are about to bring 
about a kind of an industrial clearing-house where the 
grievances of both sides can be carefully discussed and 
fairly weighed, and with the benefit of public opinion 
upon the side that is right there is no question but that 
lasting, permanent, and great benefit will be derived. 
(Applause.) 

In the relations that we have here we want to bring 
about an American spirit. One of the troubles of labor 
organization, as I see them — and I think this is a time 
for frank talk — is the fact that many of the abuses that 
have grown up in foreign countries have been brought 
into the organizations in this country. I believe the 
American workman to be courageous enough to stand 
up for his rights and intelligent enough to know when 



INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION, 6l 

he is wrong. And this is of itself the most hopeful spirit 
present to-day. We are all willing to do what we can, 
and the point is not that manufacturers should not en- 
deavor to get the greatest amount of work for the least 
amount of money, but the workers also should come to the 
front and never be determined to give the least amount 
of work for the greatest amount of money. There is no 
question but within the last few months there has been a 
sentiment in the minds of manufacturers that there had 
been the advice given to **go easy.** Now I myself have 
noticed this, but I do not believe it is going to prevail. 
I find that whenever I talk to a man who is working and 
put the facts plainly before him, that he meets me more 
than half-way. There has never been any trouble in 
my relations with men in my efforts to get a fair and 
honest adjustment of any dispute. That is the spirit 
we must bring about throughout the country. Men left 
entirely to themselves and pushed aside naturally be- 
come suspicious and do not believe that the men who 
come to them and say they are going to do the best they 
can for them are always truthful. Many times they have 
found that they were not. They have found that they 
have been deceived, that they have been kept down 
and in every way circumscribed in their general action 
for fear that they would get too much power. But we 
have to recognize the union to-day, because the labor- 
union man does exist and he is going to stay and he is 
going to get stronger, at the same time that the employer 
is going to become stronger and more powerful. And 
as soon as they get together and realize that they are all 
working for a common end, the better for all concerned. 
I believe that this meeting is going to bring about 
some such result. We must not allow any retrograde 



62 INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION. 

movement. We must keep to the front. It means con- 
stant attention. It means giving in, in many cases. We 
have all got to be willing to compromise to a certain ex- 
tent, and I do not mean by that that either side will have 
to give up any rights, — there is to be no bending of the 
knee, — but both the laborer and employer must come with 
well defined rights, which, after careful discussion, have 
been so well placed before both sides that each side will 
say when the decision is arrived at: ** Well, that is the 
best we can get, and we should be satisfied.** 

I do not believe in coddling men. This idea of giving 
them things outside which brings about a certain amount 
of obligation on their part is all wrong. If you have 
anything to give them, give it to them in time or money. 
They don*t care for the outside things. (Applause.) 

As I said before, I came here simply to learn. I was 
very much interested in the speech that has just gone 
before me. A spirit of that sort among the labor leaders 
of this country cannot help but produce great and per- 
manent results. And when we look at the great body 
of men that the last speaker represents, and see the won- 
derful work they are doing in their particular line, all done 
in a spirit of conciliation and fairness, and, as he said, of 
willingness to take what he can get and not put down an 
absolute challenge and say, **If you don't give us what 
we ask, we will do nothing, or strike *' — the moment 
we get that spirit we accomplish something lasting. I 
stand ready to do whatever I can and to always meet 
and talk with any man representing labor upon an abso- 
lutely fair basis, realizing that he has rights and realizing 
that I have them, and that both of us are going to con- 
tend, as far as we can, without open rupture, for our 
own best interests, because the idea that any set of rnen 



INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION. 6j 

are going to abandon their interests is a mistake — but 
there need be no more open ruptures if men will reason. 
If we bring about an American spirit in this country 
as between the employer and the laborer, there is no 
question but that the workman will stand with the em- 
ployer to keep this country to the fore as the great 
manufacturing nation of the earth. 

Mr. Straus: Gentlemen, we have heard from those 
who transport us by land and we have had the pleasure 
of hearing from a distinguished representative of those 
who transport us by sea. There is still another method 
of transportation of those who go neither by land nor 
sea, but who go afoot. And I shall call upon Mr. Horace 
M. Eaton, the General Secretary of the Boot and Shoe 
Workers' Union, of Boston, Mass. 

Mr. Horace M. Eaton: Mr. Chairman, ladies, and 
gentlemen — Our organization has been in the work of 
practical arbitration and conciliation for a little more 
than three years. Hence, you will understand that we 
are more than ordinarily interested in a conference of 
this character. I would like to say that one of the chief 
obstacles that we have to overcome in extending the 
system of arbitration in the manufacture of boots and 
shoes is the idea that prevails among the employers that 
they want to run their own business, and in some unde- 
fined way they have the fear that a labor organization is 
going to prevent them from doing that thing. A short 
while ago I was asked by a shoe publication to write a 
short article and show cause why shoe manufacturers 
should deal with the union. The thought occurred to 
me that I could do no better than direct a few shafts 
at that notion of the employers that they should run 



64 HWUSTRTAL CONC/LiATION-, 

their own business, not with the idea that the union 
should encroach upon the employer's right, but with the 
idea of clearly showing the employer where his right 
leaves off and where the right of the employees begins. 
And so I stated in the article which I wrote that if man 
lived by and for himseK alone and did not in any way 
associate with his fellow-men he could run his own busi- 
ness. How successful he would be would depend upon 
his own labor and not upon the labor of other people. 
I mentioned that Robinson Crusoe apparently ran his 
business until Friday appeared, and then he proceeded 
to run Friday's business. (Applause. ) I wished in mak- 
ing this illustration to emphasize the fact that in a very 
broad sense we are servants of the public, and that we do 
not any of us run our own business. 

Now, the organization which I represent has for three 
years been making contracts to arbitrate. The contract 
is between the National Union and the employer. The 
National Union assumes to control the acts ^f the local 
union and see to it that the local union keeps its con- 
tract. The National Union is a police force to maintain 
law and order in the industry. There is a union label 
proposition which goes with it and is the foundation of 
it, because it is a singular fact that the employers in the 
shoe industry do not come into this arrangement because 
of the equitable character of the arbitration agreement 
itself, but are in a measure forced into it by the demand 
for union-label goods. And after they get into it they 
begin to realize the equitable nature of the contract 
itself. 

Our contract provides that all disputes of whatever 
character shall be referred to a board of arbitration. 
The contract runs three years. We make an agreement 



INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION, 65 

for three years ahead that any dispute that comes up 
shall be referred lo a board of arbitration. That con- 
tract is based upon the assumption at least that the rights 
of the parties are equal, that after that contract is made 
the employer cannot change the wages without the con- 
sent of the employee, neither can the employee change 
the wages without the consent of the employer, except 
by a decision of the board of arbitration. The contract 
assumes also the employer's absolute right to manage his 
own business. He is absolutely free to introduce any • 
system of machinery or manufacture that he sees fit. It 
is for him to say how he wants the work done, and it is 
for us to say whether we are satisfied with the wages or 
not. The whole question with us is the question of 
wages. The whole question with him is to direct how 
the work shall be performed 

We feel that we cannot under those circumstances be 
properly charged with restricting the output. I noticed 
there was quite a lot said here yesterday about restrict- 
ing the output. I wish to call your attention to the fact 
that it is within my memory — and I have only eighteen 
years* experience as a member of the union — that heels 
were nailed on by hand, and the average mechanic 
could nail on about seventy or eighty pairs per day, 
that is, one hundred and forty or one hundred and 
sixty shoes. We have had three different sets of machin- 
ery introduced on that part since then, and to-day we 
have a machine by the use of which a competent man and 
a boy can nail on in ten hours about three thousand 
pairs of heels, six thousand shoes, ten a minute — take 
them off the rack, put them on the jack, put them in the 
machine, press the lever which nails the heel, take it out, 
and put it on the rack again. Now, if they had 



66 INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION. 

nothing else to do they would be doing ten a minute. 
But they must gain time on that in order to get 
stock together, to feed themselves, so to speak. 
So they must work, while they are actually at work, at 
an average speed of not less than fifteen a minute. Now, 
with such an intense development of machinery in the 
shoe trade, and such a high rate of speed, I do not think 
we can be fairly charged with restricting output. On 
the other hand it seems to me that the constant intense 
application to fast machinery is making of a shoe worker a 
very irritable and erratic individual sometimes. It spoils 
his temper, makes him easily excitable, working amid so 
much noise and at such a terrific pace. 

But I won't deal with that question. I am here to 
give you a few facts of this system of arbitration which 
we are developing. Some of the parties that we negotiate 
with assume that once they have entered into an agree- 
ment with a union to arbitrate, the various departments 
of their factories will be in the hands of the board of 
arbitration all the time. That is one of the fears they 
entertain. Now, it is a fact that in the State of Massa- 
chusetts, where we have more of these contracts than we 
have anywhere else, we have only arbitrated three cases 
in three years. One of them, which is the only one I 
can speak with absolute information about, involved a 
difference in dispute of a twelfth of a cent a pair in the 
labor cost of a pair of shoes. So you can see it was not 
a very gigantic difference. The fact is that inasmuch 
as we had agreed to arbitrate we don't arbitrate at all; 
we settle it up amongst ourselves. (Applause.) 

Another peculiar tendency of these agreements we are 
making is that they are making of the national officers of 
our union, that is my colleague and myself, judges. Our 



INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION, 6/ 

work is becoming of a judicial character. I have in 
mind one factory working under our system upon which 
we have three times sat as judges between the local union 
and the manufacturer, the employer, to decide points at 
issue which were left to us to decide by both parties, and 
we went over and listened to the arguments on both 
sides and then rendered a decision. That has happened 
three times in one instance with apparently perfect satis- 
faction all around. We have another instance where the 
contract provides for what we call a local board of 
arbitration, that is, the employer chooses one, the em- 
ployees choose one, and the two choose a third, and in 
this case, by consent of both of the parties, should those 
two fail to select a third, it is left to the national officers 
to select a third arbitrator. 

I merely mention these instances to show that where 
once the employer and the employees have come together 
under agreement to submit their cases to arbitration 
a feeling of mutual respect and confidence develops 
which makes it in most cases unnecessary to go to the 
court of last resort. (Applause.) 

Mr. Straus: Gentlemen, I now have the pleasure of 
calling upon a gentleman who is identified with labor so 
prominently and so honorably, and in such a distin- 
guished capacity, that he requires very little, in fact no 
introduction whatever. His name is his own introduc- 
tion. I have the pleasure of introducing to you Mr. 
Samuel Gompers, President of the American Federation 
of Labor. (Applause.) 

Mr. Samuel Gompers: The whole struggle of the 
human family has been to secure a better condition for 
those who work. In the early history of man, when his 



68 INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION. 

tools of labor were identical with his weapons of offence 
and defence, the wars of conquest went on, but those 
captured in battle were not retained by their conquer- 
ors ; they were put to death. 

The safety of the conquerors demanded the death of 
the conquered. They could not be made slaves and 
forced to work, for this furnished the slaves with the 
identical and only weapons with which the conquerors 
were armed, and always gave the conquered an oppor- 
tunity for their freedom. 

It was a marvellous advance that differentiated the 
weapon of war from the tool of labor. The first step in 
this direction pointed the way to the farthest and most 
effectual advance in the civilization of the human family. 

When that first differentiation took place, the captives 
were no longer put to death. They were made slaves 
and forced to produce wealth while the conquerors 
marched in their warlike armor toward new conquests. 

I shall not attempt to trace the historical development 
of the workers* struggles for recognition of their rights, 
except to say this, that the change went on from slave 
io serf, and from serf to wage- worker; so that we now 
find ourselves in the condition where the wage-worker is 
placed in competition with his fellow wage-worker. It 
is the desire of the workers to reduce the evil side of 
that competition to its minimum. 

In our new twentieth century we are living in an era 
of the highest development of industry. Concentration 
of wealth and power is in the direction of securing the 
greatest production by the fewest possible factors. 
What are these wonderful productive forces ? 

The improvement of machinery, the division and sub- 
division of labor, the application of new propelling 



INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION, 69 

forces of steam and electricity and water, — all these 
great powers and motives and influences converge to the 
one point of increasing the production of wealth by the 
workers. 

Let me say to you, my friends, that even with that 
picture in mind, there are still some in our day who 
speak of the individuality of the worker. 

I grant you that where economic and social conditions 
admit of individual action, that is the ideal situation. 
But when we find on the one hand a great concentration 
of wealth and power, accompanied by a marked concen- 
tration of industry, with the direction of the great indus- 
trial and distributing forces placed in the hands of a few, 
it is as idle for the individual worker to attempt to obtain 
redress for bad conditions as it is for a vessel to survive 
a hurricane without rudder or seamen to guide her. 

What is necessary is that the workers, so far as con- 
sistent with iheir social and political liberty, shall merge 
their economic interests with those of their fellow-work- 
ers, and by that method endeavor to obtain consideration 
for the rights of both the elements in production. 

In our industrial system of society I would not have 
the rights of an employer toyed with nor flagrantly vio- 
lated. Also, I want to say that I will not tolerate, nor 
stand by, nor permit, so far as my powers and opportu- 
nities may afford, that the rights of the weakest of our 
fellow-workers shall be trampled upon. 

There is in our time, if not a harmony of interests, — 
which I shall not attempt to discuss at this time, because 
there is a divergence of opinion upon that subject, — yet 
certainly a community of interests, to the end that indus- 
trial peace shall be maintained. 

I will not join — I have not joined — in that hue and 



70 INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION, 

cry against combinations of capital. I realize that that 
is a matter of economy and development and strength. 

But I do say, and I might say it parenthetically, that 
I object to the organizations of capital popularly known 
as ** Trusts/* when they attempt to interfere with the 
political affairs of our country, and particularly the 
judiciary. I am speaking of them from an industrial 
and not from a commercial point of view. 

I want to see the organization of the wage-earners and 
the organization of the employers, through their respec- 
tive representatives, meet around the table in the office 
of the employers or in the office of the union, if you 
please, or, if that be not agreeable to either, then in an 
office or a room upon neutral ground, there to discuss 
the questions of wages and hours of labor and condi- 
tions of employment and all things consistent with the 
industrial and commercial success of our country, that . 
shall tend to the uplifting of the human family. 

One difficulty has been that employers of labor have 
turned their backs upon the workers because the latter 
organized and attempted to secure recognition of the 
fact that they are basic elements in the production and 
distribution of wealth, and as such have a right to be 
consulted as to the conditions under which either or 
both shall be conducted. 

We assert that the employer has no right to say to us 
that there is not anything to arbitrate. In that declara- 
tion is embodied all the evil and viciousness of the 
principle of master and slave. 

When organized labor says, ** We want to arbitrate,'' 
it means that the employer or his representative shall 
meet with the workers, or their representatives, and en- 
deavor calmly and carefully, intelligently and humanely, 



INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION. 7 1 

to arrive at a result that shall be beneficial to both and 
to all the people. 

We realize, too, that an agreement with an employer 
is an obligation which ought to be as faithfully kept as 
a bond or the oath of allegiance to our country. 

We object to holding, legally or otherwise, the organi- 
zations of labor liable in damages for the violation of 
agreements either by an officer of the organization or 
even the collectivity as expressed by the organization 
itself. The reason is, that we have in mind the experi- 
ence of centuries ago, when the organization of the 
toilers in the old guilds was destroyed and their funds 
confiscated simply at the whim of the crown or those 
who stood for it. 

We believe that the greatest damage which can be in- 
flicted upon the workers is to reap the fruits of their 
own folly when they are wrong. Nothing can contri- 
bute so much to rectify errors. Nothing tends so much 
to bring about a clearer understanding of the mutual 
rights of both workmen and employers as the endeavor 
to place their errors behind them and to learn by their 
mistakes. 

We are endeavoring to place the movement of the 
workers upon a higher plane of ethical consideration. 
We are desirous of the good will of employers and the 
employing class and their representatives. Our move- 
ment makes for the common good of all and instils into 
the minds and hearts of our fellow-toilers in unions the 
same elements of honor that we expect in individuals. 
No man can maintain his self-respect or command the 
respect of his neighbors and friends unless his word can 
be absolutely relied upon. It is the same with unions. 

We want better relations with the employing class. 



'JZ INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION, 

We are contributing our quota toward that desirable end. 
But we claim, even if it be not generally recognized, 
that there is no factor in our behalf so potent to secure 
consideration at the hands of our employers, or fair agree- 
ments from them, or a faithful adherence to the terms 
of the contracts or agreements, as a well organized body 
of wage-earners in the unions of their trades and callings ; 
these combined in the national unions and still further 
associated in a thorough federation of all organized 
workers. 

My friends, I came here directly from the twenty-first 
convention of the American Federation of Labor, the 
highest and best organized and most thoroughly feder- 
ated effort of the workers of the world that has ever 
existed. Coming from their ringing appeals and their 
arguments and their philosophy and the yearnings and 
expressions of hope, as well as their complaints of errors 
and wrongs of the past, let me assure you that the 
organized workers of America have no fear for the 
future, whatever may present itself. 

They are true, loyal, faithful, and devoted citizens of 
our country, loving its institutions, revering its tradi- 
tions, and honoring the men who have made this great 
country of ours what it is. Realizing the very many 
changed conditions that have come about, the workers 
have no fear for the future, but rely upon the justice of 
their cause, the humane aspirations which prompt them, 
and the grit and the manhood that make up the Ameri- 
can character, to solve all problems. 

Mr. Straus: Gentlemen, you have had the pleasure 
of listening to the foremost representative of organized 
l^bor in this country. I shall now call upon a gentle- 



INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION, 73 

man who comes here as a fraternal delegate to the 
American Federation of Labor from Great Britain, 
Mr. Benjamin Tillett. 

Mr. Benjamin Tillett: Mr. Chairman and friends — 
You have heard the very forceful address from an old 
colleague of mine, and I think he has presented some of 
the salient features of our movement and has expressed 
many of our arguments. I might say, Mr. Chairman, 
that though I am comparatively a young man, I have 
seen more than a score of years of service, and although 
I have been through many campaigns and seen many 
changes in the thought of the workers of the country I 
belong to, I feel more hopeful than ever that a saner 
policy will be expressed toward labor by the capitalists 
of the future. I think in our country we have gone a 
great way. Our colonies have adopted compulsory 
arbitration. They don*t fear the judiciary or the cor- 
ruption of the judicial mind. They don't fear the 
political influences behind the judicial mind. And they 
frankly, openly, and honestly demanded the full recog- 
nition of their citizenship and have taken their place 
in the law and the government of the country. We 
have in Britain — or in England proper — many associa- 
tions between employers and workmen, and generally 
speaking the more these two parties realize each other 
the more they understand that labor has long ago 
dropped its serfdom and has come out to demand the 
full recognition of its humanity, and therefore as a factor 
in production it claims that the wealth created shall not 
be merged in aggregations of capital but shall go toward 
the uplifting of the level of the living and the making of 
a more robust nation. We have our sliding scales and 
our conferences, and I should say that in this country 



74 INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION, 

where the problem seems to be more acute than our 
own, it requires level-headed men. I could endorse the 
position of one of your speakers yesterday, that the arbi- 
trator for industrial peace in America has a greater honor 
and distinction than to be your President. 

We want labor. And labor is a consumer as well as 
a producer. We belonging to trade-unions are not 
disposed to find fault with the trusts of capital. We 
ourselves are a trust of labor. We wish to eliminate 
every form of servile and slavish conditions that prevents 
a man demanding his right to live and demanding his 
right to work. And so being in a labor trust we say that 
the trusts must grow and their main object ostensibly 
will be to do away with extraneous or unnecessary ex- 
penses, and to bring the commodity under its best form 
and under the most economical conditions and in 
the cheapest manner to the consumer. That is an 
economic condition and we are not going to grumble 
about it. But we say as workmen that a million of 
money spent in wages for circulation, a million spent 
upon the workers in better food and better conditions, 
contributes many times more toward trade, and prosper- 
ity, and is more useful, than a hundred millions spent in 
any other form. (Applause.) For that reason we say: 
you talk of killing the goose that lays the golden tg'g^ 
but in the past the capitalists have been killing the goose 
that has been eating the stuff or trying to. The workman 
is not merely a producer, he is a consumer, and as a 
consumer makes for trade. 

Putting it upon its practical line, we say there is no 
reason for the arbitrament of the strike to take place. 
But you in this country, we are watching you. The 
trusts are growing in our own country. I am not here 



INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION, 75 

to say that there can be absolutely sweet brotherly feel- 
ings between capital and labor — the economic antagonism 
prevents that — but I don't see why a sane business re- 
lationship should not exist. The capitalists fight each 
other, the millionaires fight each other, and surely it 
is illogical and inconsistent of them to say that we ought 
not to fight for our little bit when they do not scruple in 
their business concerns to take advantage of their neigh- 
bor, holding up a railway, holding up a harvest, corner- 
ing here, cornering there. Surely that is antagonism, and 
when these gentlemen are absolutely singing the one song 
and are loving each other and have no competition, it 
will be right for them to come and tell us to have no 
competition as against them. So long as we understand 
that we are not going to slobber on each other's 
shoulders, so long as we understand that there is an an- 
tagonism and that the workers as consumers must be 
antagonistic to the capitalist who holds and possesses 
the productive powers, — the worker as a consumer 
must feel his antagonism — as a worker he must feel that 
also, — we can then raise the antagonism, I hope, to a high 
plane, to a high level, taking the place of those fierce 
fights that have happened. There are more men killed by 
work than war, much as we deplore war. (Applause.) 
There are worse conditions even during industrial 
peace. There is the sum-total of the wretchedness, 
the sum-total of the deaths, and the sum-total of the 
diseased. Rapine and war cannot compare with the 
misery which exists so long as poverty exists. We 
are not saying that the capitalist ought to do away 
with poverty. We will do that ourselves (applause), but 
we do say that we ought to have a fair, square deal, a 
fair, square fight, and that so long as they claim the 



^6 INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION. 

right to be in a trust of capital we claim the right to be 
in a trust for labor and determined to eliminate every 
factor that will keep us from attaining the mental and 
moral condition of beings which it has taken the Creator 
millions of years to make, and one drop of whose blood's 
mechanism is finer and more complex than the most 
clever of invented machinery. We say when we realize 
what it means to create a man that we want to raise 
ourselves to the level of that manhood and demand from 
the conditions of our country and our environment some- 
thing that will not make us less a man but will bring us 
nearer to the conception of that Godhead where we can 
live honest, open, robust lives. (Applause.) 

The man of old who stood upon Pisgah and saw his 
people in the wilderness quarrelling with each other — 
there is no Moses to-day, there is no Pisgah that I can 
see, except the Pisgah of hope. And from our Pisgah 
we look beyond, beyond Canaan, and we see whatever 
the strife may be, whatever the chicanery or corruption. 
However much abuse of power those holding the capital 
of the country may be guilty of, we believe in the people, 
we believe in the eternal justice of their cause. We be- 
lieve that as invention is added to invention, continent to 
continent, resource to resource, and as every one of the 
secrets revealed is the revealing of mother nature's great 
love, we must fight those who would stand between us 
and our rightful share of man's evolution. We must fight 
them with brains, fight them with our souls, and fight not 
only to command ourselves, but to command our country 
and command the right of being a man and not a chattel. 
The capitalists in the old country in the past said we 
had no right; they had the money and we had to do as 
they told us. We said we were men like them — we also 



INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION. J J 

were men and demanded the right to do with our own 
what we chose. In this country of yours it is going 
to be the centre of a great economical revolution. 
The efforts of this country must be for the good of your 
country. I hail with satisfaction the attempt made to 
bring closer to each other those who for economic 
and social reasons are apart, in order that at least 
the outcome of it may be that you will understand 
each other better. Anyway we stand on our side for 
our manhood and we recognize the right of no man 
to make a slave of another. These capitalists of 
yours, they have a terrible responsibility, and I would 
rather be a laborer obscure, I would rather be a poor 
thing of the street on the Judgment Day, than I would 
be the man who has abused the tremendous powers 
placed in his hands, and has paid no heed to the misery 
that has been involved in the sacrifices that yielded 
to him his wealth. I say I would rather be the worst 
thing on this earth before my Maker than I would be 
that capitalist who has ignored the tremendous obliga- 
tion placed upon him by his wealth. We recognize our 
obligation. Work is blessed. Let it be noble. Let it 
be dignified. If it is not noble or dignified, then it 
is slavery, and the country that supports it is a country 
that cannot live, unless history lies. Wherever slavery 
existed empires have fallen. And in that greater wisdom 
of the larger mind and the larger heart it may be that 
this economical revolution will afford in time to come 
such a solution of the problem that all these inventions 
and all the things that go to improve our methods and 
increase our productivity will be used not for the pur- 
poses of a class or a few, but will be used for the blessing 
of mankind in general. 



78 INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION. 

Mr. Straus: Gentlemen, after listening to the elo- 
quent address of the delegate from England, who cer- 
tainly speaks for himself and shows what an eloquent 
man has been sent over here from abroad, I have the 
pleasure of calling upon the representative of the largest 
labor organization in the world — the United Mine Work- 
ers' Union, which I am told has 285,000 men. I refer 
to Mr. John Mitchell, President of the United Mine 
Workers' Union. (Applause.) 

Mr. John Mitchell: Mr. Chairman and gentlemen — 
I understand that the hour has about arrived when the 
sessions of this conference are scheduled to close, and, 
having been prevented by circumstances over which I 
had no control from enjoying the pleasure of listening 
to the speakers who have addressed this conference at its 
previous sessions, I fear there is some danger of my re- 
peating what other speakers may have said; however, 
briefly stated, to me the question of the proper relation- 
ship between labor and capital, or, more accurately 
speaking, between working men and capitalists, is not a 
complex problem ; it is not one which requires the in- 
troduction or the consummation of Utopian theories, 
or the conversion of the public to any particular ism. 
To my mind — and I have participated in about as many 
industrial wars as any one of my age — the application of 
reason and common horse-sense on the part of the em- 
ployers of labor and the representatives of the workmen 
is all that is required. If the employers of labor and the 
representatives of the labor unions would meet in confer- 
ence ; if when they met they would be governed by facts ; 
if they would tell each other the absolute truth, I dare- 
say that the days of strikes and lockouts would be over. 
I have never, in all my experience, seen a strike that 



INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION, 79 

could not have been averted if the employers and the 
representatives of the employees had met in joint con- 
ference before the strike was inaugurated; provided, of 
course, that the conferees were actuated by honest 
purposes and lofty motives. 

I understand that the purpose of this conference is to 
try to perfect an arrangement between men representa- 
tive of capital, men representative of labor, and men 
representative of the business and professional interests 
of our country, whereby strikes and lockouts, with their 
attendant sufferings and losses, may be, if not entirely 
eliminated, at least reduced to a minimum. This move- 
ment had its inception in Chicago, about one year ago; 
and if carried on to the conclusion fondly hoped for then 
our entire nation shall have cause to rejoice, and more 
shall have been done to solve the problem of the rela- 
tionship between capitalists and laborers than by any 
previous movement in our country. 

If the men who have taken part in this meeting, if the 
men who are interested in this movement will give as 
much thought, time, and energy to make it successful as 
the representatives of labor have given to their own par- 
ticular branches of industry, then I daresay something 
tangible will come out of it; and before one year shall 
have passed the effects and results will have been 
demonstrated, and strikes and lockouts perceptibly 
reduced. 

In closing these few remarks I desire to say, as one 
who knows the effects of industrial war, that no one more 
than I shall welcome the day of industrial peace. I have 
said on many occasions that I was opposed to strikes, 
opposed to lockouts, opposed to industrial turmoil; 
that I favored peace, but always with the qualification 



8o INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION. 

that it must be an honorable peace. There will never 
be peace between the men who work and those who 
employ men to work unless that peace guarantees 
to each that which is their proper due; and as I said 
before, if through the medium of this movement we can 
bring the representatives of each of these apparently 
antagonistic forces together, if we can sit down, look 
into each other's eyes, tell each other the exact truth, 
then the happy days of industrial peace and prosperity 
for all shall have arrived. 

Mr. Straus: I now have the pleasure of calling upon 
Mr. James Duncan, the First Vice-President of the 
American Federation of Labor, and Secretary of the 
Granite Workers* Union. 

Mr. James Duncan: Mr. Chairman and friends — 
This is the first conference of the Civic Federation it 
has been possible for me to attend, and I therefore come 
here more as a spectator than as a participant in speech- 
making. I desire to say, however, that I congratulate 
those who compose this conference and who conceived 
the idea of meetings of this kind, for it shows more 
clearly perhaps than can be spoken in words that the 
efforts of the laboring men of the world have not been 
in vain. The great labor movement of which we as 
workers are humble members stands primarily for peace, 
peace with justice. We are not disposed to view the 
one without the other; and when one is offered without 
the other we feel that we have been treated unfairly. 

I do not care at the present time to go into the histori- 
cal side of the question. Mr. Gompers dealt with it 
somewhat, and the time is too short to take up that part 
of the story, even where he left it, and carry it to the 



INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION, 8l 

present time. But I desire to impress upon you the fact 
that the labor movement even as we know it in our day- 
is not new. It has been groping along ever since the 
dawn of civilization wherever there was a wrong to 
redress. There are many who think that the labor move- 
ment practically began since the Civil War. This is be- 
cause matters have taken place since then which have 
brought it more to their attention than any that occurred 
prior to that time, excepting in the great outbursts 
which in many instances might be called revolutions 
rather than the evolutionary development of the con- 
dition of the lowly and downtrodden. 

We therefore feel, that standing for peace and having 
struggled for it — and some of us can even remember 
the time when a man who was a unionist and stood for 
the interests of his fellow-worker was pointed out as a 
dangerous citizen, as a man who had to be watched lest 
in some part of his daily performances something might 
happen to the danger of the community at large — that 
such a change in the space of a quarter of a century 
during which the feeling I have referred to has been 
eliminated, so that a laboring man at the present time is 
looked upon as being fashionable if he is a member of 
his trade organization — has perhaps been as much the 
cause as anything else in bringing about conferences of 
this kind. The public at large has arrived at the con- 
clusion that there is more back of the movement advo- 
cated by the union men of the country and of the social 
reform organizations than at first appeared, and in conse- 
quence they are giving the subject fuller consideration. 
It is pleasing indeed to the student of sociology to know 
that such is the case. 

If there were any danger of our labor movement 

6 



82 INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION. 

following the course of similar movements in the older 
countries and losing respect for the government of the 
country it would be because the toilers have become 
cognizant of the fact that from time to time the common 
people are denied their civil rights both by what should 
be popular government, and by the judiciary; and espe- 
cially that the man with a large bank account is able to 
get favorable consideration in our legislatures and even 
judicial decisions in his favor because of his wealth. I 
am not one who believes that the courts are absolutely 
turned over to the rich and against the poor. I know, 
however, that in conflicts in which lawsuits are made 
part of the controversy the fact that the rich are better 
able to carry their cases into court and to fight for them 
through well trained and high-priced attorneys makes 
them more confident of getting decisions in their favor. 
The workers, therefore, do not look upon that form of 
procedure as containing a great amount of good or 
justice to them. 

I started by saying that I came as a listener, but I 
want to say before sitting down that I hope something 
good and tangible will come from this meeting. There 
are evidences of progress of the kind desired already 
throughout the land. We have arbitration boards in 
several States which have followed the ideas put forth 
at this conference and have been productive of great good 
to employer and employee. We find that voluntary 
arbitration is productive of the greatest amount of good, 
and I believe that from such deliberations upon disputed 
points and from the influence of conferences of this 
kind a new era has arrived wherein the cause for which 
we stand will be given fuller consideration than it ever 
has had before, and will be fraught with better results. 



INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION, 83 

The working people of the United States and Canada 
stand for a form of expansion which has heretofore 
not been given the consideration that another form 
of expansion has received in the recent affairs of our 
country. I listened very closely to the statement of 
the speaker who preceded me — Ben Tillett of the Lon- 
don Dockers — upon the important question of consumers 
of production, and I want to say that if from our confer- 
ences here the idea can go forth that industrial expan- 
sion at home is to be given the full consideration its 
importance requires, we will be able in the near future 
to make the word ** expansion *' more honorable than 
it is at present in the political arena. I have not 
the time to debate the policy of the Government in 
gathering in the islands of the Atlantic and the 
Pacific, but I stand for expansion at home. I contend 
for conditions among our own people whereby they 
will be recognized as the most profitable consumers, 
for then the manufacturers of our country will find that 
the home market is better for them than any market they 
can get abroad. (Applause.) When the time arrives 
that each working man in our broad land knows that he 
has at his command two or three suits of clothes and two 
or three pairs of shoes in place of being dependent upon 
one suit or one pair and scarcely knowing where the 
others will come from when his meagre supply is unfit 
for further use — when that time has arrived and other 
similar opportunities of consuming native products are 
given to the common people, a market for home produc- 
tion will be provided, compared with which there is 
nothing to be found in the markets outside of where Old 
Glory flies. We therefore stand for expansion at home, 
and it can be safely brought about by a fair reduction of 



84 INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION, 

the working hours to not over eight per day with safe 
and consistent increase of remuneration such as would 
enable the producer and those dependent upon him to 
be consumers to the extent of satisfying their normal 
and rational desires of home life and good citizenship. 
I do not believe there is a manufacturer in the United 
States of America but will admit that after all the place 
where he can sell his goods and get the best prices for 
them is right here at home in his own country. We 
therefore demand opportunity, and if our desires are 
heeded and if this conference will aid in pointing the 
way to that end by reducing the number of strikes or by 
making lockouts less frequent, our meeting shall not 
have been held in vain. (Applause.) 

Mr. Easley: I have just received a telegram from 
Mr. James A. Chambers, President of the American 
Glass Company, Pittsburg: 

'* I regret exceedingly my inability to be with you. You have my 
best wishes for the final success of your noble undertaking and can 
depend upon my heartiest co-operation. I know of no cause of 
more vital importance to good government and that promises such 
universal happiness and prosperity to the nation as the permanent 
establishment of a proper understanding of the relationship of 
capital and labor. James A. Chambers." 

Mr. Sargent: Mr. Chairman, I beg the indulgence 
of yourself and your honorable body to present a motion : 
That the Chairman of this meeting appoint an executive 
committee of the Industrial Department of the National 
Civic Federation, consisting of twelve representatives of 
the employers of labor, twelve representing employees of 
labor, and twelve representing the general public in- 



INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION. 85 

terests of the country, the honorable Chairman to be a 
member of this committee. (Applause.) 
Motion seconded and adopted. 

Mr. Straus: Before closing this session I wish to say 
there is a very modest man who has been connected with 
this movement who has labored hard, intelligently, 
wisely, and fairly in this field, who deserves a vote of 
thanks, and that is the Secretary of the National Civic 
Federation, Mr. Ralph M. Easley. (Applause.) If 
Senator Hanna will propose that motion, I will be glad 
to put it. 

Senator Hanna: Mr. Chairman, it gives me great 
pleasure, in recognition of that service, to offer a resolu- 
tion that a vote of thanks be tendered to Mr. Easley, 
not only for his careful work, but for the spirit which he 
has shown and the efforts he has made in bringing these 
elements together. I have been with him somewhat in 
the council, and I feel that to him more than to any one 
of us is due the credit of this meeting. (Applause.) 

Motion adopted. 

Mr. Straus: I shall call upon one other gentleman 
before closing this conference, a gentleman to whom 
those of us who were here yesterday had the pleasure of 
listening for a few moments, whose reputation for good 
work and for this work is known throughout the land, 
who has come here from a distance because his heart is 
in this work. I refer to the Most Reverend Archbishop 
John Ireland. (Applause.) 

Archbishop Ireland: Mr. Chairman and friends — 
May the winds of heaven bear across continents and 
oceans the news that in the great city of New York there 
was held a meeting such as that in which we have taken 



86 INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION. 

part. A meeting such as this is the honor of America, 
the honor of humanity. It is a signal omen of good and 
great things for the world of men during Christianity's 
twentieth century. Of the twentieth century it is the 
ambition that the holy principles of brotherhood, of 
charity, and of justice, announced to the ages by the 
Saviour, become deeper and wider realities than at any 
previous time in history. Can those principles of 
brotherhood, of charity, and of justice be better and 
more clearly realized than through the practical applica- 
tion of the noble and beautiful sentiments that have 
gone forth from this meeting yesterday and to-day ? 

Yes; let us have industrial peace. Let men, whether 
employers or workmen, know and feel that they are 
brothers. Let all know and feel that every man, poorest 
or richest, is a child of God, the most valued thing upon 
this globe. A man, whoever he be, is made in the image 
and the likeness of the Creator. Henceforth be it our 
earnest strive with all might that charity and justice 
toward one another be the prevailing life of our great 
nation. 

In the addresses which I heard yesterday and to-day 
I read all the elements of hope and peace. In those 
addresses there is the recognition of the vital principles 
that make for justice and for charity. Whatever seem- 
ing divergencies of opinion there were among speakers 
were divergencies in words rather than in principles. 
One speaker viewed a matter under one aspect, another 
under another: there vvas no substantial disagreement: 
with explanations both would have been in fullest har- 
mony. Such divergencies emphasize the importance of 
employers and workmen coming together, talking to- 
gether, looking into the minds and hearts of one another. 



INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION, 8/ 

I do not know that at any time yet in the industrial 
history of the country there has ever been a gathering so 
hopeful as ours, — a gathering at which men representing 
capital, men representing labor, men standing before the 
country for social peace and for the happiness of all, 
did together, as we have done, shake hands and say to 
one another. Let us understand one another, that there 
may be between us good will and harmony. In presence 
of a meeting such as ours, I should be faithless to 
humanity, and faithless to the religious sentiments im- 
bedded in the hearts of all, were I not to proclaim that 
we shall surely succeed in our resolve to understand one 
another, to bring peace and good will into the counsels 
of the nation*s industries. 

Proud am I to-day of America and of the democracy 
of America; hopeful am I of democracy's lasting triumph. 
This is true democracy, this is the victory of democracy, 
that in the name of the manhood of the country we are 
united to guard the rights of all and to procure the social 
happiness of all. 

Name, then, Mr. Chairman, your executive commit- 
tee. Mention thereon no one whose heart does not thrill 
with the sentiments of justice and charity, that have re- 
ceived in our meeting such noble expressions. And 
when your committee is named and its members enter 
upon their work, may they not forget the responsibility 
resting upon them: the responsibility to bring justice to 
all, to bring peace to all, to guard the weak from peril 
of oppression, to guard the strong from the yet more dire 
peril of allowing even a shadow of oppression to spread 
over their fellow-men. 

Our aspirations and our hopes are blessed by the great 
Lord and common Father of all. 



88 INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION, 

Mr. Straus: I wish to announce that the executive 
committee will be appointed to-night or between this 
and to-night, and that they will be called together to- 
morrow for the purpose of devising and perfecting a plan 
of work and the scope of work which they will under- 
take. 

And now I declare this conference adjourned. 

Adjourned. 



PART II 

PAPERS READ AT THE CHICAGO CONFER- 
ENCE, DEC. 17-18, 1900. 



89 



OPENING SPEECH BY MR. FRANKLIN Mac- 
VEAGH, CHAIRMAN OF THE CONFERENCE. 

IN opening the meeting, Chairman MacVeagh spoke as 
follows : 

My selection as chairman of this conference is due to 
the recognition of a third party to the dispute between 
organized labor and organized capital. There is a great 
number of inoffensive people who are neither organized 
workmen nor organized capitalists, and who have the 
misfortune in all conflicts between these two forces to be 
ground between the upper and nether millstones. To 
this third estate I happen to belong. We constitute 
the controlling element of public opinion, and public 
opinion is the last support of organized capital and 
organized labor and of all other organized power in a 
free nation. 

First, in calling this conference to order, I must say a 
word of congratulation on the successful launching of 
the National Civic Federation, and to express what we 
all feel, that this new organization has come forward to 
perform duties of great importance to the welfare and 
progress of America. It creates a national forum for 
the great issues of American life, where they may be 
discussed within the hearing of the nation on a platform 
uncommitted, unpartisan, and unprejudiced, and with 
as fair a prospect as discussion can have of aiding an 
ultimate solution. We have plenty of discussion from 
the points of view of all sorts of dogmatic sets, classes, 

91 



92 INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION. 

and organizations, but until now there has been no 
national forum where all leaders could meet and know 
each other, and where all opinions could be heard 
through their able and respected advocates, in the spirit 
and under conditions of frank and tolerant discussion. 
And while recognizing the importance of this new 
national factor, I feel it is a great pleasure to acknow- 
ledge that we owe its inception and organization almost 
wholly to one man, its secretary, Mr. Easley. 

I am glad the question of industrial arbitration has 
been given precedence in the conference the Federation 
proposes to hold. Nothing is more pressing than a 
method of adjusting the differences of capital and labor. 
Nothing more immediately or profoundly involves vast 
American interests. We are confronted just now by a 
great expansion of our foreign trade and by a new vital- 
ity and vigor of domestic prosperity and development. 
We can, therefore, ill afford to wait for the basis of in- 
dustrial peace if that basis is possibly to be found now. 
Neither the working men nor the employers nor the gen- 
eral public can afford to waste time in half-thought-out 
theories, policies, and practices if it is possible to hasten 
the solution. 

I shall listen with great interest to the facts and the 
reasons which you will give to the conference, and leave 
it to you to discuss whether compulsory arbitration, after 
the New Zealand manner, — or any compulsory arbitra- 
tion, — is our remedy; whether the machinery of the 
boards of arbitration under favorable appointment and 
equipment could accomplish the purpose; whether the 
arbitrators voluntarily chosen for each case under a gen- 
eral custom would be a way to secure peace, and, finally, 
whether any form of arbitration can be made a solution 



INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION. 93 

of the troubles and losses with which the conflicts of 
capital and labor are attended. 

It has long been assumed that some form of arbitration 
is the goal toward which all solutions of these problems 
must of necessity advance. I believe this conference 
will modify that time-honored assumption. Whether 
some form of arbitration — that is, a hearing and judg- 
ment by wholly disinterested arbitrators — shall be 
accepted or not as the best method of determining 
questions between employer and employee, we are no 
longer to be limited to the consideration of arbitration 
in seeking our remedy. 

The old method of solution by a conference of the 
disagreeing parties themselves — always regarded as the 
most natural, radical, and desirable, if practical — proved 
itself incompetent as a universal expedient; and arbitra- 
tion became to most of us, for the time being, the only 
alternative. Of late, however, the advance of organiza- 
tion among both employers and working men, and espe- 
cially the increasing prevalence of national organization, 
has made it possible in some cases, at least, to resume 
the practice of settlement by conference of the interested 
parties themselves through national conferences, fully 
representative of the interests of the disputing parties, 
but removed a stage or two from the immediate heat of 
the dispute. One can see in this substitute for arbi- 
tration the elimination of the disinterestedness of the 
arbitrator, but at the same time the elimination of his 
unfamiliarity with the complexities, technicalities, and 
the national or general importance and significance of the 
questions involved, and the elimination equally of his 
rather helpless and hopeless inclination to **split the 
difference.'* 



94 INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION. 

Introduction of these new experiments and theories 
into the field of discussion will add freshness and interest 
to the proceedings of the conference, and possibly 
broaden the prospect of favorable results. Adoption of 
a successful method of settling economic disagreements 
between capital and labor without strife would have great 
influence on the material progress of the nation; but 
it would have also a far-reaching influence on the de- 
velopment of the nation's civilization, and therein lies, 
after all, its chief significance and value. 

I know that a deep chasm seems to many to exist be- 
tween labor and capital as the result of past industrial 
and social conditions. Many think this chasm, like 
chasms in nature, is the slow work of centuries and can- 
not be filled or bridged, and that a new social and 
economic world is the only remedy. With apparently 
incurable strife between labor and capital always before 
the mind and the persistent and loud noise of the strife 
always in the ears, it is not a wonder that men should 
believe there is something fundamentally and helplessly 
out of joint in industrial relations. And then, to increase 
one's confusion of mind, vast and unassimilated new 
features have appeared in these industrial relations, as 
for example the great aggregations of capital in corpora- 
tions and individual men. 

But what a passing makeshift arbitration would be if 
the interests of capital and labor really were irreconcil- 
able — fundamentally irreconcilable. What a depressing 
outlook for most of us if there were no prospect for real 
industrial or social unity under our present political, 
industrial, and social systems! To my mind this great 
chasm is an effect of the imagination, to be regretted and 
always to be combated. The result of any customary 



INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION, 95 

rational, peaceful adjustment of industrial disputes will 
be to discredit this imaginary chasm — especially if it 
should be found possible to adjust such disputes without 
the aid of any outside person or authority. 

No industrial or social system can make real classes, 
and without real classes there can be no industrial or 
social chasms. Democracy, with its beliefs and its in- 
stitutions, is the one irresistible, the one wholly progres- 
sive social force of modern life; and it will prevail more 
and more, so far at least as any man of the present can 
look forward into the future. All the centuries have 
been preparing for it — preparing for democracy and not 
preparing chasms at all. Democracy has not fully real- 
ized itself yet, it is true, but it will never take a per- 
manent backward step, for it cannot. It is not among 
the conceivable possibilities of our era that it should. 
Then why waste thought on chasms and classes ? Not 
but that there are enough barriers between capital and 
labor — between employers and workmen. Not but that 
there are enough distinctions between rich and poor — 
enough and to spare. But if we find a way — before long 
we are sure to find a way — for capital and labor to live 
in peace, a step will be made toward that habitual nor- 
mal sense of social solidarity which is the foundation 
stone of democracy. 

Much of the dividing line between the employer and 
employed is fading out even while we think it is so deep 
and permanent. For instance, the greatest strikes of 
the present day are not between the capitalists and 
laborers at all; they are between employees and em- 
ployees — between working men called managers or super- 
intendents and working men called working men — strikes 
with which capitalists have nothing to do except to take 



96 INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION, 

their punishment and loss. There are still some indus- 
trial disputes in which the capitalists themselves are one 
of the two parties, as in strikes of building trades, 
though even there the important capital in the case is 
not that of the contractor, but that of the owner of the 
building, who usually is a helpless sufferer and hanger- 
on entitled to the sympathy of all charitable hearts. But 
the greater strikes and lockouts — such as those on rail- 
roads or in coal mines — are the contentions of two sets 
of employees or of two sets of wage-earners, and the 
stockholders, the capitalists — in many cases women and 
children and savings-banks — generally are more helpless 
and suffering than the general public itself. 

As an instance, on the other hand, of the widening of 
the capitalist class, take the vast tendency of recent 
times toward corporate methods in business — the substi- 
tution of the corporation for the individual business man, 
the wide introduction of the share form of capital, and 
the further tendency to make the shares small enough 
for investors of every size. The irresistible tendency to- 
ward this capitalistic evolution or revolution is destroy- 
ing the exclusiveness of capital and is making the world 
of the capitalist as large as the nation itself. Almost 
every man with the single virtue of frugality may be a 
capitalist, and when America shall be wise enough to take 
the poiot of view that legalized corporations are neces- 
sarily for all the people and then shall see to it that they 
are both organized and administered for the people, and 
under the clear eye of public authority, as the national 
banks already are, then with great strides the hostile dis- 
tinctions between capital and labor will become more 
meaningless. 

Nor is it certain that the great wealth of individuals 



INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION, 97 

will arouse, as many predict, increasing unfriendliness 
in the general community. This unfriendliness is due 
to the sense of the unfairness and the injustice of the op- 
portunities afforded certain classes of men and to the 
overbearing uses and the useless uses so often made of 
wealth. But these objections are not permanent in any 
large contemplation of the subject. In the first place, 
there is the prospect that we shall learn how to protect 
the community against those unfair and unrighteous 
manipulations of capital that take from the many, by 
processes of merely shrewd or unscrupulous promotion 
or combination, to pile up for a few. Again, there is a 
growing prospect that our laws and our government will 
soon become satisfied with what they have done to build 
up excessive or undeserved fortunes. And it is evident 
that more and more large amounts of excessive wealth 
will find their way by gifts into the public and beneficent 
uses of the nation, and if not by gift, then by reasonable 
taxation. 

Finally, the greed of wealth itself, the ambition for ex- 
treme and unrequired wealth, promises to undo itself, as 
any form of greed is likely to do. More money than a 
man really needs requires distinction to make it desira- 
ble. Formerly wealth was generally distinguished. It 
was associated mainly with personal distinction and made 
to support and maintain personal distinction. It also 
was not easy to get, and therefore it was more to be de- 
sired and it conferred greater honor. Of late, it has 
become so much easier to obtain and is so frequently 
associated with commonplace or objectionable qualities, 
that one may look forward to the time when wealth will 
not necessarily confer either distinction or honor. I 
need to add only that the normal disposition to honor 



98 INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION. 

and envy rich men is being strained to the breaking- 
point, even at present, by the disappointing and dis- 
heartening quality of the latest corps of rich men, who 
seem to be coming, with a new impartiality and rotation, 
from the lower classes of the business world. 

Wherever we look we find evidences that there are no 
permanent or deep divisions in our citizenship and that 
what lines of demarkation do exist are not growing more, 
but less, defined. This conference is not engaged ex- 
clusively, therefore, in the alleviation of an immediate 
strain in the relation between capital and labor. It is in 
a larger field than that. It is working for immediate re- 
lief, but along lines that will bring the greater and final 
relief of a friendly, undivided, and homogeneous indus- 
trial commonwealth. 



TRADE BOARDS OF CONCILIATION AND 
ARBITRATION ABROAD. 

BY CARROLL D. WRIGHT, UNITED STATES COMMIS- 
SIONER OF LABOR. 

IT is my purpose at this time, in accordance with the 
suggestion of the Secretary of the National Civic 
Federation, to confine my address to some of the latest 
attempts in Europe to adjust industrial difficulties 
through the efforts of voluntary trade boards of con- 
ciliation and arbitration, that is, private boards that are 
established by employers and employees voluntarily, the 
members of the boards being selected from the em- 
ployers and the employees. The moral principle lying 
back of the establishment of such boards is one which 
should be recognized at the outset. It is not new, nor 
does it contain any revolutionary elements. The pro- 
phet Isaiah, a citizen of Jerusalem, and a man who was 
considered in his day of great importance by his neigh- 
bors, became alarmed at what he thought an impending 
national calamity. He therefore undertook to point out 
to the citizens of Jerusalem their particular sins of omis- 
sion and commission, the wrongs which had been done, 
and to prophesy to them the results of their actions. 
When he had made a strong arraignment he said: 
*'Come, now, and let us reason together." This was 
about 750 years before Christ. The great prophet knew 

99 



lOO INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION, 

that by reasoning together people could come to see more 
clearly than by any other method the real dangers which 
confronted them. There would be a comparison of 
views, a free discussion of suggestions relating to reme- 
dies, and out of the reasoning together Isaiah hoped to 
bring better conditions. This is the crucial point of 
conciliation, and the experience of some European 
countries that have had the best results has been along 
the very line laid down by Isaiah, and has led to the 
most peaceful and satisfactory conditions so far as the 
relations of employer and employee are concerned. 
They have reasoned together, and thus by reasoning 
have conciliated each other, and so avoided an open 
issue and hence the necessity for any arbitration. Arbi- 
tration can have no place when conciliation is success- 
ful, and conciliation should be the very first resort of all 
disputants, whether in industrial or other affairs. Fail- 
ing this moral method, a board of arbitration then be- 
comes a reasonable resort of disputants. 

In my treatment of this subject I shall make no attempt 
at originality, even in the form of expression. I shall use 
the statements which have appeared in my own official 
reports, for which I need not give credit, and shall not 
hesitate to take statements from other official documents 
wherever necessary, for my purpose is to be as brief as 
possible in the hour allotted me, and at the same time 
to indicate what appear more and more to me to be the 
true methods of adjusting industrial disputes. I have 
therefore drawn freely from well-known official docu- 
ments.' 

* For valuable information relative to the extension and working 
of voluntary or private trade boards of conciliation and arbitration 
abroad, see reports on industrial conciliation and arbitration pub- 



INDUSTRIAL CONCILIA TIOJST, lOl 

The application of the old biblical doctrine of reason- 
ing together in industrial matters was first applied in 
France, and it is interesting, both from a moral and a 
historical point of view, to understand the real basis of 
the modern voluntary trade boards of conciliation and 
arbitration. We shall then understand more clearly the 
evolution of those boards which now exist and which are 
accomplishing so much. Speaking broadly, it may be 
said that industrial conciliation and arbitration were 
recognized originally as methods of settling industrial 
disputes early in the present century in France. Trade 
guilds had existed in that country, and trade matters 
had been regulated by them, instances of such regulation 
running back to the Middle Ages. The guilds were 
abolished, however, during the reign of Louis XVI. In 
1806, after some years of unsatisfactory legislation, the 
working men of Lyons made a request upon the govern- 
ment, and the first Napoleon, in accordance therewith, 
established courts of arbitration and conciliation. These 
early and simple courts have been continued until the 
present time under the title of ''Conseils des Prud'- 
hommeSy'* or councils of experts. These councils are 
practically judicial tribunals, constituted under and by 
the authority of the Minister of Commerce, but through 

lished by the Massachusetts Bureau of Statistics of Labor in 1881 ; 
Dr. E. R. L. Gould's paper at the Congress of Industrial Concilia- 
tion and Arbitration held in Chicago November 13-14, 1894 ; the 
reports of the Royal Commission on Labor (British), especially the 
volumes on France, Germany, Switzerland, and Italy ; Mr. Joseph 
D. Weeks's reports, especially his address at the Chicago conference 
in 1894 ; Mr. John B. McPherson's report (with rules and regula- 
tions), on " Voluntary Conciliation and Arbitration in Great Britain," 
published in the Bulletin of the U. S. Department of Labor, No. 28, 
May, 1900; 2iiidii\iQ Encyclopedia of Social Re for7n. 



I02 INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION'. 

the local Chambers of Commerce. It is their composi- 
tion that chiefly interests us at this time. They are made 
up of an equal number of employers and working men 
members, each class electing its own representatives, but 
with a president and vice-president named by the govern- 
ment. The authority of the councils of experts extends 
to every conceivable question that can arise in the work- 
shop, not only between the workman and his employer, 
but between the workman and his apprentice or his fore- 
man. They cannot, however, settle future rates of 
wages, this being done only by mutual agreement. 
When the dispute comes to a direct issue arbitration is 
compulsory upon the application of either side, and the 
courts can enforce the decisions of the board of arbitra- 
tion in the same manner that the decrees of any court of 
law are enforced. 

It is especially in the stages of conciliation that the 
workings of these courts have been beneficial to French 
industry. Probably more than ninety per cent, of all 
cases brought before them have been settled. The 
statistics in relation to the settlement of disputes give 
a most satisfactory showing, but fall far short of giving 
full expression to the great benefit which they have 
been to French industry, especially in removing causes 
of differences and in preventing them from growing into 
open disputes. M. Chevalier, in speaking of their ser- 
vices to French industry, enthusiastically exclaimed that 
they constitute one of the noblest creations with which 
this century is honored. They contain the germs of the 
private boards of conciliation and arbitration, and their 
experience has always been referred to as an unanswer- 
able argument for the creation of such boards. 

Similar tribunals exist in Belgium, but their experience 



INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION, I03 

has not been so thoroughly marked by the success that 
has accompanied those in France. This may be in some 
measure due to the fact that the Belgian boards have in 
some cases criminal jurisdiction. 

A law having some of the elements of the French law, 
and probably framed from it, was placed on the statute 
books in the reign of George IV., in 1824, but it re- 
mained practically a dead letter. England did not 
possess the organizations necessary to its successful 
workings, and both employer and employed objected 
seriously to its compulsory features. Mr. Rupert Kettle, 
one of the champions of industrial conciliation and arbi- 
tration, did not hesitate to say, referring to it, that **It 
is agreed that, according to the spirit of our laws and 
the freedom of our people, any procedure, to be popu- 
lar, must be accepted voluntarily by both contending 
parties " ; and it is true that the experience of the British 
people, so far as their history of conciliation and arbitra- 
tion is concerned, fully justifies Mr. Kettle's opinion. 
So much for the foundation principles, both morally and 
practically, of the modern method of conciliation and 
arbitration prevailing largely in England and to some 
extent in other countries. 

The manufacturers and working men of England long 
ago recognized the disastrous results of industrial wars 
and their futility, and they set themselves to originate 
ways to avoid, if possible, trade disputes, and, if the 
avoidance were found impossible, to try some method of 
arbitrating and settling them in peaceful ways. They 
grew tired after many years of the destructive methods 
that had been in vogue; that is, great strikes lasting for 
many weeks, long-continued contests between capital 
and labor, resulting in great loss and suffering. They 



I04 INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION. 

were tired, too, of jealousies and vindictiveness, and 
from i860 on, and even beginning at an earlier date, the 
doctrines of conciliation and arbitration have been tak- 
ing deep root, until at present there are very few trades 
and hardly a trade centre in England which has not its 
boards and committees organized to bring quiet and 
contentment, or at least to reduce the discontent, to both 
masters and men. And these efforts are independent of 
law. 

In addition to the legislation just referred to, England 
in 1837 amended her Act of 1824, which provided for 
compulsory arbitration, making resort to the boards 
somewhat voluntary, but where an agreement could not 
be reached reference was made to the appointing magis- 
trate, that is, the magistrate appointing the board. In 
1867 another measure, known as the Councils of Con- 
ciliation Act, was passed, by which it was meant to ex- 
tend voluntary arbitration provided that any number of 
employers and workmen in a particular trade might agree 
to create a council of conciliation or arbitration, but 
when created it should be licensed by the government to 
exercise all the powers permitted by the compulsory act 
of 1824. In 1872 the Masters and Workmen Arbitration 
Act was passed. This provided for an option to both 
parties between a board, a council, and standing arbi- 
trators. The latest act is that of 1896, which repeals 
the acts of 1824, 1867, and 1872. This latest statute is 
entitled **An Act to make better provision for the pre- 
vention and settlement of trade disputes.'* It provides 
for the registration by the Board of Trade of any board 
established for the purpose of settling disputes between 
employers and workmen, and contains provisions regard- 
ing the settlement of such disputes. Boards under it 



INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION. I05 

may inquire into the causes and circumstances of the 
difference, may take steps for the purpose of enabling 
the parties to the difference to meet together, by them- 
selves or their representatives, and on the application of 
employers or workmen may appoint a person or persons 
to act as conciliator or as a board of conciliation. Such 
boards may also, on the application of both parties, ap- 
point an arbitrator. 

I refer to this legislation on the part of England simply 
to show one of the elements of the evolution of their par- 
ticular kind of industrial conciliation and arbitration, for 
all the legislative attempts in England have been failures, 
some of them abject failures; but that method we are 
dealing with, on the other hand, has had a thoroughly 
honorable and satisfactory history, which begins in i860 
or thereabouts. Previous to that year, which must be 
considered as marking an epoch in the history of in- 
dustrial conciliation and arbitration in England, there 
had been frequent attempts at the settlement of industrial 
disputes. Legal sanctions, however, were never sought 
for the awards. They were loyally accepted without 
any constraint, except a man's sense of honor and a cer- 
tain esprit de corps both among the employers and em- 
ployed; and these voluntary attempts were not only 
frequent but were used in some trades systematically, 
especially in the pottery trade, one of the most difficult 
in which to harmonize the conflicting views of capital 
and labor, by reason of the large number of trades into 
which labor is divided and some peculiar customs which 
have been regarded as invested rights. Yet in this trade 
there has not been a general strike since 1836, and those 
interested in it do not hesitate to give the reason for such 
a long period of industrial peace as the settlement of 



106 INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION. 

disputes by voluntary arbitration. Their contracts for 
hiring contain a clause providing that **If any dispute 
arise between the parties as to the price or wages to be 
paid, by virtue of such an agreement, the dispute shall 
be referred to an arbitration board of six persons, to 
consist of three manufacturers, chosen by the masters, 
and three working potters, elected by the working men." 
This clause has prevented strikes in the pottery trade for 
many years. 

These efforts in the pottery and other trades were 
desultory and preliminary to the real history and success 
of the private conciliation and arbitration movement in 
England prior to i860. The principle was often ap- 
pealed to in many trades, though in none does it appear 
to have worked as well or even to have been tried so con- 
tinuously as in the pottery trade. As the result of the 
trials there had grown up, especially among the work- 
people, a very decided feeling in favor of industrial 
arbitration and a willingness to at least give it a trial, 
and this willingness doubtless rendered the attempts to 
establish it as a principle much surer of success. 

It was late in the year i860 when, mainly through the 
efforts of Mr. A. J. Mundella, the first permanent or con- 
tinuous board of arbitration and conciliation in England 
was established. This was in the hosiery and glove trade 
at Nottingham. The distinguishing feature of Mr. Mun- 
della' s board, or, rather, the board organized by his 
efforts, and at the same time the peculiar characteristic 
of arbitration since i860, lies in the fact that it is sys- 
tematic conciliation and arbitration organized on a 
purely voluntary basis, without an appeal to legal pro- 
cesses, even to enforce its decisions. Its novelty, there- 
fore, i5 not that it is systematic, for the French Conseils 



INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION, lO/ 

des Prud' hommes were that, but that it is both systematic 
and voluntary, and the French boards were not. 

I need not, of course, in this presence spend much time 
in showing the difference between conciliation and arbi- 
tration. Arbitration is a generic word, and the one more 
commonly and popularly used in referring to the settle- 
ment of disputes. Arbitration must be carried on in a 
formal manner; it deals with the larger questions of 
trade. Conciliation is not formal. It does not attempt 
to sit in judgment and decide in a given case what is 
right and what is wrong, but its efforts are directed in a 
friendly spirit to the adjustment of differences by indu- 
cing the parties to agree among themselves. Each says 
to the other, ** Come, let us reason together," and con- 
ciliation removes causes of dissensions and prevents 
differences from becoming disputes by establishing a 
cordial feeling between those who may be parties to the 
same. Briefly, then, it may be said that conciliation is 
informal arbitration, and that arbitration, on the other 
hand, is formal; it sits in judgment. 

It is the preventive feature which gives conciliation a 
value beyond estimation. It involves the moral attitude 
of the two parties, or rather the ability of each morally 
to consider the attitude of the other. Probably the 
very essence of its strength lies in the fact that arbitration 
is back of it, or, at least, that arbitration may be resorted 
to provided conciliation fails to effect its purpose; be- 
cause, ultimately, where parties cannot reason together 
there must be the power to determine, and where that 
power is voluntarily given to the representatives of each 
party involved it becomes arbitration, and arbitration can 
accomplish at certain points in the dispute what con- 
ciliation is powerless to bring about. 



lo8 INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION. 

Reasoning along these lines, the Nottingham system 
of arbitration and conciliation, the first great systematic 
effort, becomes historic. Mr. Mundella was connected 
with the hosiery and glove trade, which is one of the 
most localized in Great Britain, being carried on only in 
the immediate vicinity of Nottingham, Nottinghamshire, 
Derbyshire, and Leicestershire. Here, then, was a con- 
centration of one class of skilled labor, the concentration 
naturally and logically leading to union. Prior to i860 
the relations between the employers and the employees 
in these trades were about as uncomfortable and even 
ugly as could well be imagined. From 17 10 to 1820 
there was a frightful list of murders, riots, arson, and 
machine-breaking recorded, all growing out of the differ- 
ences which arose from time to time. Machine-breaking 
was punishable by death under a law passed early in this 
century, and in 1816 six persons paid the penalty. After 
that, while the worse features of industrial strife disap- 
peared in a large measure, the relations were in no wise 
improved, and the strife assumed various forms. Sus- 
picion, lack of confidence, hatred — all the things that 
lead to industrial warfare — existed. There was also arro- 
gance, oppression, and a strong hatred on the part of the 
employers. Strikes and lockouts were constantly occur- 
ring, and no judicious, effective effort was made to end 
them, nor was there any honest effort made to secure 
peace. In i860 there were three strikes in one of the 
three branches into which the hosiery trade is divided, 
one of the strikes lasting eleven weeks, and it was dur- 
ing this strike that the board of arbitration and con- 
ciliation was formed. Though the strike was confined 
to one branch, it was soon discovered that it was sup- 
ported by the working men in the other branches, and, 



INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION. IC9 

in what they considered self-defence, it was proposed by 
the employers to lock out the entire body of working men 
in all branches. Some of the employers, Mr. Mundella 
among them, shrank from the misery and suffering, and 
perhaps even crime, that would be the result. Some of 
them thought they might devise some better means of 
settling the difficulty. They had heard of the French 
experiments in the early part of the century, and so Mr. 
Mundella says that he and one or two others built up a 
scheme in their imagination of what they thought might 
be done to get a good understanding with their men and 
to regulate wages. At a meeting of the manufacturers a 
committee of three was appointed to invite the workmen 
to a conference, which invitation was accepted. Mr. 
Mundella briefly tells the story: 

** We three met perhaps a dozen leaders of the trades-union ; and 
we consulted with these men, told them that the present plan was a 
bad one, that it seemed to us that they took every advantage of us 
when we had a demand, and we took every advantage of them when 
trade was bad, and it was a system mutually predatory. And there 
is no doubt that it was so : we pressed down the price as low as we 
could, and they pressed up the price as high as they could. This 
often caused a strike in pressing it down, and a strike in getting it 
up ; and these strikes were most ruinous and injurious to all parties, 
because, when we might have been supplying our customers, our 
machinery was idle ; and we suggested whether we could not try 
some better scheme. Well, the men were very suspicious at first ; 
indeed, it is impossible to describe to you how suspiciously we looked 
at each other. Some of the manufacturers also deprecated our pro- 
ceedings, and said that we were degrading them, and humiliating 
them, and so on. However, we had some ideas of our own, and we 
went on with them ; and we sketched out what we called a Board of 
Arbitration and Conciliation.'* 

The result of the conference was the organization of 
**The Board of Arbitration and Conciliation in the 



no INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION. 

Glove and Hosiery Trade/' This was the first per- 
manent board established. Very simple rules were 
adopted, and they have worked so well in most particu- 
lars that they have hardly been amended since the day 
the board was created. The object of the board is de- 
clared to be to arbitrate on any question of wages that 
may be referred to it, and to endeavor by conciliatory 
means to put an end to any disputes that may arise. 
The board consists of twenty-two members, half opera- 
tives and half manufacturers, elected for one year, each 
class electing its own representatives. The delegates 
have full powers, and the decisions of the board are con- 
sidered binding upon all. There is a provision for a 
committee of inquiry, to whom all differences must be 
referred before the board will act upon them. This 
committee has no power to make an award, but acts 
only as conciliator. A month's notice is to be given to 
the secretaries before any change in the rate of wages 
will be considered. 

The workings of this board are very interesting. The 
original plan had some faults, which were corrected 
later on and by the creation of boards in other trades; 
but the experience of the hosiery and glove trade was 
so satisfactory that others followed its example and some 
three years later the building trades of Wolverhampton 
adopted a system of arbitration, differing, however, in 
some essential particulars from the Nottingham board. 
It is interesting to know that the Wolverhampton plan 
was worked out without any knowledge on the part of 
its chief promoter of what had been done at Nottingham, 
except the general information of the success there. 
This attempt avoided some of the errors of the Notting- 
ham plan, but it lacked some of its admirable features, 



INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION. Ill 

and necessarily so, because the building trades are pe- 
culiarly liable to industrial disputes, over customs and 
some other things, as well as wages, that do not come 
into the trades devoted to the production of goods. 

Prior to 1864 the building trades of Wolverhampton 
were involved in many strikes seriously interfering with 
the business of the town. One in 1863 lasted seventeen 
weeks, and left a feeling of discontent that promised 
trouble in the future. It would take up too much time, 
however, to point out the differences in the two boards, 
that of Wolverhampton and that of Nottingham. They 
both involve the same general principle — that of men 
and masters, to use an English expression, settling their 
own affairs, reasoning together. But it is important to 
know that the boards of arbitration existing in England 
embody the best characteristics of the Nottingham and 
Wolverhampton systems. They may differ in detail, but 
their fundamental features are the same. They are vol- 
untary, and they are composed of an equal number of 
employers and employed, each class selecting its own 
representatives. There is in all the boards a provision 
for conciliation without convening the entire member- 
ship. Regular meetings of the board are provided for, 
whether there is any business to be transacted or not, 
and in some form or other there is a power to which 
either party can appeal without pride or shame that has 
authority to determine as well as to hear, and whose de- 
cisions are received without exultation or humiliation, 
that is, an umpire. 

The next great trade to adopt the features of volun- 
tary conciliation and arbitration was the iron trade. 
Then the coal trade followed suit, and so the system is 
established independently of law. Its workings were 



112 INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION. 

such that many other industries became interested, and 
were glad to relieve themselves of industrial warfare. 

It may be asked, What are the most recent experiences 
in Great Britain under a system which has existed for 
forty years? A fairly adequate answer may be made, 
and one which ought to be very encouraging to the in- 
dustrial interests of this country. One of the most recent 
controversies, as well as one of the largest and most 
wide-reaching, among English workmen was that between 
the Amalgamated Society of Engineers, or, as we call 
them, machinists, and the Employers' Federation of 
Engineering Associations in 1897. The immediate cause 
of the conflict was the demand for an eight-hour day. 
After many attempts at settlement, propositions by each 
party and counter-propositions by the other, and the re- 
jection of propositions, this severe industrial war was 
brought to an end January 31, 1898, the struggle lasting 
more than thirty weeks. Many conferences had taken 
place, but after a few months the lockout extended and 
suffering and privation increased among the men. Jan- 
uary 13, 1898, the London joint committee, which 
ordered the strike, the controversy being a combination 
of strike and lockout, passed a resolution to withdraw 
the demand for the eight-hour day. Notice of this 
action was given to the employers, who consented to in- 
corporate in the terms of settlement notes and explana- 
tions tending to protect the interests of the trade-unions, 
and the men were advised to accept the offer. This 
was accomplished by a vote of 28,588 in favor and 13,- 
927 against the proposition. In the end the men lost the 
eight-hour day, the first cause of the struggle, but gained 
some formal recognition of trade-unionism, which the 
employers all the while protested they were not fighting 



INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION. II3 

and had no desire to crush. The chief points of the 
terms of settlement, so far as this paper is concerned, are 
contained in a note stating that there is no desire on the 
part of the federation (the employers' organization) to 
create a specially favored class of workmen; that with a 
view to avoiding disputes in future a deputation of work- 
men will be received by their employers, by appointment, 
for mutual discussion of questions in the settlement of 
which both parties are directly concerned, and that in 
case of disagreement the local associations of employers 
will negotiate with the local officials of the trade-unions. 
In the event of any trade-union desiring to raise any 
question with an employers' association, a meeting can 
be arranged by application to the secretary of the em- 
ployers' local association to discuss the question, and 
failing settlement by the local association and the trade- 
union of any question brought before them, the matter 
can be forthwith referred to the executive board of the 
federation and the central authority of the trade-union. 
Pending the question being dealt with, there must be no 
stoppage of work, either of a partial or a general charac- 
ter. Work must proceed under the current conditions. 
A grievance may be brought forward for discussion 
either by the workman individually concerned, or by him 
and his fellow-workmen, or by the representatives of the 
union. In no instance, however, do the federated em- 
ployers propose conditions which are not at present being 
worked under by large numbers of the members of the 
allied trade-unions. 

There are, of course, different opinions among the 
officers and members of the Amalgamated Society of 
Engineers relative to the wisdom of these results. Some 
of them think that the provisions of the agreement have 

8 



114 INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION. 

not worked to the advantage of the men, but, instead, 
have resulted in ill feeling. The men themselves prefer 
an independent board made up of men not connected 
with the trade, but the employers reject the interven- 
tion of third parties. The men are not hostile to the 
principle of arbitration, provided independent persons 
can be secured to act. In the settlement agreed upon, 
however, there is no provision for reference to a 
third person, and if the representatives of the masters 
and men cannot agree nothing but a rupture will 
ensue. They have had local arrangements for concilia- 
tion and arbitration, but not for the whole society before 
the strike of 1897-98. 

Many of the men and many of the employers do not 
regard arbitration as an entirely unmixed good. Much 
depends upon how it is brought about and conducted. 
In the arbitration already agreed to by the masters they 
have made provision, as far as possible, to avoid splitting 
the difference. This has proved fairly satisfactory. 
The employers prefer men accustomed to dealing with 
evidence and facts, and they always decline a man who 
smacks of politics. Oftentimes the matter in dispute is 
one of principle, on which there can be no splitting of 
the difference. 

The conciliation board has saved immense sums of 
money for the shipbuilding yards, and there is a growing 
disposition on each side to settle disputes amicably. 
There is much less heat and fire, and the men are far 
more ready to adopt peaceful means of settlement than 
at any previous time in their history. 

The Miners' Federation of Great Britain contains 
about 230,000 financial members, and comprises in its 
membership the miners of Scotland, Wales, and England, 



INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION, I15 

except those of Durham and Northumberland, who have 
an association of their own. In 1893 one of the greatest 
contests in the entire kingdom occurred in the coal trade. 
It began in June, the owners asking for a reduction of 
twenty-five per cent, in wages, based upon the standard 
of 1888. Joint meetings were held, but the men de- 
clared that there was no living wage in that year, and it 
is also a fact that the collieries did not pay the owners. 
The debates and arguments in these joint meetings were, 
of course, exceedingly important. Work had ceased by 
the 28th of July, 1893, and on August 23d a resolution 
was passed by the Miners* Federation that it would not 
submit to a reduction in wages. So the issue was sharply 
defined. Widespread distress prevailed and great losses 
were caused by the long-drawn-out strike, facts which 
attracted the attention of the Prime Minister, at that 
time Mr. Gladstone. After many weeks of effort the 
parties seemed almost as far apart as when the strike 
began, and Mr. Gladstone suggested a conference under 
the chairmanship of Lord Rosebery, who was not to act 
as an arbitrator or umpire, but should confine his action 
to offering his good offices in order to assist the parties in 
arriving between themselves at a friendly settlement of 
the questions in dispute. A meeting was held Novem- 
ber 17th, and after sitting many hours a settlement was 
effected, providing that a board of conciliation be con- 
stituted forthwith, to last for one year at least, consisting 
of an equal number of coal owners and miners' repre- 
sentatives — fourteen each. It was provided that at their 
first meeting they should endeavor to elect a chairman 
from outside, and if they failed they were to ask the 
Speaker of the House of Commons to nominate one, 
the chairman to have a casting vote. The board, when 



Il6 INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION. 

constituted, was to have power to determine from time 
to time the rate of wages on and from February i, 1894. 
The first meeting was to be held December 13th, and the 
men were to resume work at once at the old rate of 
wages until February i, 1894. It was also agreed that 
all collieries, so far as practicable, should be reopened 
for work forthwith, and that no impediment should be 
placed in the way of the return of the men to work. 
When the board met it could not agree upon a chairman, 
and the Speaker of the House of Commons appointed 
Lord Shand, a law lord of the Scottish bar. 

The first meeting of the new board was held in De- 
cember, 1893, but it did not work very satisfactorily. 
Further conferences were held, and in June, 1894, in the 
absence of the independent chairman, the representa- 
tives of the owners and of the miners agreed that wages 
should be reduced ten per cent., making them thirty 
per cent, above the standard of 1888, and, further, that 
there should be no reduction for two years, but that the 
board could raise wages fifteen per cent, above the 
standard. Further trouble occurred in 1896 and 1898, 
however. In the latter year the owners pressed for a 
renewal of the conciliation board, and it was resusci- 
tated, principally on the old lines, although the minimum 
wage feature was retained and the chairman was given 
a deciding vote in case of inability to agree. No diffi- 
culty was experienced, as was the case when the board 
of 1893 was formed, in selecting the independent chair- 
man. The men's representatives named Lord James, 
who was accepted by the masters. Provision was made, 
however, for the selection of a chairman in case of dis- 
agreement, and that power was lodged with the Speaker 
of the House of Commons. 



INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION, I17 

The rules then adopted (1898) provided for a board to 
be known as ** The Board of Conciliation for the Coal 
Trade of the Federated Districts,** to determine from 
time to time the rate of wages as from January i, 1899, 
the board to consist of an equal number of coal owners 
or coal owners' representatives and miners or miners* 
representatives, — fourteen of each, — with a chairman 
from outside, as stated. 

In January, 1899, the men applied for an increase of 
seven and one half per cent., and after a long discussion 
the rate was granted. Under the rules and custom, 
when an increase or decrease is demanded by one side 
or the other a fixed sum must be named, and the chair- 
man must decide the question submitted to him. He 
must give either the per cent, demanded or nothing; 
there can be no splitting the difference. This provision 
overcomes an objection to the independent umpire 
which is frequently urged, as the disposition of such an 
official, when he can play the part of a compromiser, is 
to give something to the side making the demand; and 
this is especially true when the umpire belongs to the 
political class and has the chance to make a play for 
popularity. 

Like the Amalgamated Society of Engineers, the mem- 
bers have different views relative to the effectiveness of 
the method provided. One prominent representative of 
the employers insists that no technical knowledge is re- 
quired for the independent chairman, and that it is best 
to have a man not connected with the trade, for both 
sides are governed by their own views and often lack 
balance and judicial minds. The weakness in the pres- 
ent board is that there is no provision for enforcing the 
decision. A man can give two weeks* notice to quit; 



Il8 INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION. 

and if an employer does not abide by the decision pres- 
sure is put upon him by the masters' board, but he can 
withdraw from the federation and forfeit the money he 
has paid to the association. 

It is also the opinion of some of the members that 
both sides should have large funds, for if each side 
is well supplied with money there is hesitation about 
wasting it. 

The Northumberland coal trade has its board of 
conciliation and arbitration, which has worked with 
general satisfaction, there being here and there, of 
course, parties who object not only to methods but to 
results. 

The boot and shoe trade of Leicester represents over 
two hundred and fifty boot and shoe factories, which 
have sprung up during the past forty years. The fed- 
eration numbers about eleven thousand men. In 1895 
there was a serious lockout caused by the introduction 
of machinery. After six weeks* struggle the terms of 
settlement were agreed upon, one of the provisions being 
that certain sums of money should be deposited in the 
hands of trustees as a guaranty for the carrying out of 
the provisions of the agreement, and a trust deed was 
executed by which each side deposited ;^iooo as a fund 
from which fines for breaches of the rules should be 
levied. Their method is to constitute a board consist- 
ing of representatives of both sides and an umpire. 
With very few exceptions, the agreement has worked in 
a very satisfactory manner. 

The experience of the one hundred and forty factories 
engaged in boot and shoe production in Northampton 
has been fairly satisfactory. After the strike of 1895 
terms of settlement were reached under which it was 



INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION. II9 

agreed that there should be a joint committee of repre- 
sentatives of the employers and workmen, four of each, 
to determine the principles and methods of arrangement 
and classification on which piece-work statements for 
machine workers shall be based; that there may be 
various local boards of arbitration and conciliation, con- 
sisting of equal numbers of representatives of employers 
and workmen in the Northampton district, thus recon- 
stituting the old boards, revising, however, the rules so 
far as was necessary, with a view to greater uniformity 
in the methods of the joint committees of representatives 
of employers and employed sitting as boards. These 
reconstituted boards are to have full power to settle all 
questions submitted to them concerning wages, hours of 
labor, and the conditions of employment of all classes 
of work-people within their districts, when it is found 
impossible in the first place to settle such difficulties 
between employers and employed. Only once since the 
settlement was made in 1895 between the Federated As- 
sociations of Boot and Shoe Manufacturers and the Na- 
tional Union of Boot and Shoe Operatives has an umpire 
been called upon to make a decision of award for breach 
of compact. 

In February, 1899, a strike occurred at the shoe-shop 
of a London firm, a member of the Federated Associa- 
tion, the trouble arising over the classification of material. 
The proprietors were willing to submit the matter to the 
board of arbitration for classification, but the men re- 
fused to appoint one of their number to the board and 
prevented this from being carried out. So the manu- 
facturers made a demand for an award of damages from 
the trust fund. When this demand for compensation 
was made many felt that the testing time of the value of 



I20 INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION. 

the terms of settlement, and practically the existence 
of the board of arbitration, had come. Lord James, the 
umpire agreed upon previously, heard each side, and on 
the loth of June rendered his decision, which was that 
out of the sum of ;^iooo deposited with the trustees, 
;^3oo should be paid and forfeited to the Federated 
Association. It is interesting to note that the Monthly 
Report of the National Union of Boot and Shoe Opera- 
tives, referring to this award of Lord James, remarked 
that ** The fine of ;^3oo imposed on the union for the 
breach by our London members we hope will be a warn- 
ing to executives not to break away from rules and agree- 
ments entered into, for while the agreements are in 
existence we have every desire that they shall be honor- 
ably carried out by both sides/' 

The North of England iron trade has had much ex- 
perience in the use of trade boards. Sir David Dale, 
one of the best-known iron manufacturers in the world, 
has had much to do in bringing about settlements. The 
district represented by the manufactured iron and steel 
trade of the North of England has a board of conciliation 
and arbitration, the object being to arbitrate on wages or 
any other matters affecting the respective interests of the 
employers and operatives, and by conciliatory means to 
interpose its influence to prevent disputes and put an 
end to any that may arise. 

So, too, the iron-mining interests, while having no 
active board, have a joint committee of six owners and 
six representatives of the men. This method has been in 
operation almost thirty years. The joint committee 
deals with local questions affecting individual places, 
wages, and other matters. 

The Boiler Makers and Iron and Steel Shipbuilders* 



INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION, 121 

Society has been in existence for more than sixty years, 
and is one of the wealthiest trade-unions in England. 
There has been no strike in their trade for many years, 
more than a score, and this is accounted for by the con- 
ciliatory features which exist and the great powers given 
to the executive council of the union. There is no 
actual board of conciliation, but an agreement between 
the Tyne, Wear, Tees, and Hartlepool shipbuilders and 
the executive council of the Boiler Makers and Iron and 
Steel Shipbuilders' Society. This was signed July 5, 
1894, to continue five years. 

The Scottish manufactured iron trade has also had 
experience in recent years in the matter of trade concilia- 
tion and arbitration. In September, 1896, at the sug- 
gestion of the operatives, negotiations wxre begun 
between the employers and workmen engaged in the 
manufactured iron trade of Scotland, with a view to the 
establishment of such a board on the same lines with 
that of the North of England, already referred to. A 
conference proved the existence of a feeling on the part 
of employers and employed that the meeting together of 
representatives of the masters and operatives, by whom 
grievances could be discussed and disputes amicably 
adjusted, would conduce to mutual confidence and 
harmonious co-operation, and would be for the best in- 
terests of the trade. As a result a board was formed 
in March, 1897, including twenty works, owned by 
eighteen firms, only one manufacturer in the West of 
Scotland not being a member of the board. Sir James 
Bell, ex-lord provost of Glasgow, was unanimously 
chosen arbitrator, but during some years of the board's 
existence his services have not been needed. 

The Nottingham lace trade is another industry that 



122 INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION. 

has had large experience in the workings of boards of 
conciliation and reference. They have had these boards 
since 1868, and the changes have been comparatively 
few and slight since then, only those being made where 
experience has shown some weakness. They have 
penalties for not complying with the decisions of the 
board, which were added in 1895, and also retained in 
the rules adopted in 1898. There was a great dispute 
in 1889, lasting over eight weeks, and ending with a 
twenty per cent, reduction in wages. There are frequent 
fluctuations in the lace trade, which is largely affected 
by foreign competition, especially French and German ; 
so the board meets on an average once every week in the 
mayor's parlor. General trade conditions are not dis- 
cussed, but may be quoted in support of arguments. 
Wages are not determined by the profit. Custom origi- 
nally fixed wages in the olden days, but they have been 
scaled down gradually to fit present conditions. The 
most friendly relations have been engendered between 
the two classes by these frequent meetings of the board, 
which have created a feeling of equality as nothing else 
could. There cannot be a trade where there is a better 
feeling existing, and this despite the fact that the men 
are necessarily idle for eight months, the season running 
only from November to March. If this trade can man- 
age disputes, any trade can, for there are infinite varieties 
of lace and infinite chances for disagreement. They 
have almost reached the position where they consider 
the question in the abstract. If a man is discharged or 
stops work, the dispute is never considered until he is 
reinstated or resumes work. It is not sufficient that he 
may return; he must actually be at work before the 
board acts. If he is a recalcitraiit member pf the nianii- 



INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION, 1 23 

facturers* association who withdraws, that leaves the 
workmen free to strike the shop. 

In the cotton trade, one subject to great disputes, 
there exists the Northern Counties Amalgamated Asso- 
ciation of Weavers, consisting of eighty thousand mem- 
bers. A joint committee is employed for the settlement 
of disputes between employers and men in both the 
weaving and spinning trades. There are six representa- 
tives of each side, one being taken from each town, so 
that an unbiassed tribunal is secured from which personal 
feeling is eliminated. There has never been a single 
case, except a demand for a general advance in wages, 
which has not been settled without a strike. 

A board for the potteries trade was established in 
1868. There had been previous arrangement for small 
arbitration of minor disputes, but in 1868 a permanent 
board, constructed on the principle of equal representa- 
tion on each side, with a permanent umpire, was estab- 
lished. Distinguished men acted as umpires in this 
trade, such as E. J. Davis, Mr. Kettle, Mr. Mundella, 
Judge Hughes, and Lord Brassy. The board was ex- 
tremely useful and successful in settling a large number 
of disputes relating to individual men and branches in the 
trade, and had during its existence seven or eight great 
arbitrations, in which the interests of all operatives were 
involved. The board was reconstructed in 1884 or 
1885, in the meantime a court of conciliation working 
for the settlement of small disputes. In November and 
December, 1898, a section of the employers asked the 
men to combine with them to raise simultaneously sell- 
ing prices and wages. With no board in existence in 
the trade, in case of dispute between the employers and 
employed the two sides endeavor to have each appoint 



124 INDUSTRIAL CONCILIA TIOI^. 

an independent person as arbitrator, and the two so 
chosen to appoint an umpire. The question in dispute 
is then referred to this tribunal, which hears the em- 
ployees or their representatives and the manufacturers 
or their secretary. 

A large industry in England is that of dyeing and its 
associated trades. In July, 1891, the workmen's associa- 
tion of West Riding, in Yorkshire, which was in excellent 
working order, gave a sharp and short notice to one of the 
leading firms in Huddersfield that unless certain demands 
were granted forthwith the men would go out on a strike. 
The firm, having no association to back it and being 
busy at the time, conceded the demands, and then con- 
vened a meeting of master dyers to consider the advis- 
ability of combining. The men wished to see the 
masters organized, so that the associations could help 
each other and could form a board of conciliation. In 
October, 1892, the men's secretary and four delegates 
attended a masters' meeting, when it was resolved to 
form a board of conciliation. There were some difficul- 
ties encountered, but in 1894 a board was formed and 
held its first meeting. To show the good feeling created 
by this board the following notice was posted a month 
later by the West Riding Dyers' and Finishers' Associa- 
tion: 

**It has been brought to our notice that some of the dyers, 
finishers, millers, and scourers of West Riding have urged as a 
reason for not joining a trades-union that if they did and the em- 
ployers knew this they would be dismissed for so doing. We hereby 
give notice that any man in our employment is at liberty to join any 
trades-union he may wish to join, without any fear of such action on 
our part." 

The board of conciliation between the masters' asso- 



INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION. 125 

ciation and the amalgamated society of dyers was regis- 
tered by the Board of Trade October 29, 1896. Except 
slight misunderstandings of a very temporary nature, the 
association has worked most beneficially for all parties 
concerned. There has been very recently a reconstruc- 
tion of the rules with a view to enlarging their scope and 
probably establishing a fund from which fines could be 
deducted, but I have no report of this reconstruction. 

The cotton-warp master dyers joined the West Riding 
Dyers* and Finishers' Association and constituted a 
board of conciliation in 1897, and in May, 1899, the 
employers issued a circular to the trade and to the men's 
association in Lancashire and Yorkshire seeking to create 
a powerful and united board of conciliation for the two 
counties, including every branch of the dyers' and 
finishers' trade. I believe this has been accomplished, 
but am not fully informed. Representative men on both 
sides believed that such a board would be of very great 
service. Before the establishment of the boards diffi- 
culties were constantly arising and there was growing 
discontent, which, while more particularly affecting 
individual firms, culminated in strikes and lockouts. 
Since the establishment of the boards these have been 
obviated. In one or two cases, through misunderstand- 
ing, when the men forgot the rule and went out without 
bringing the dispute to the attention of their committee, 
the matter was soon set right and the men returned to 
work. The contact in the meetings has helped to a 
better understanding and a better knowledge all around, 
with favorable results to both masters and men. The 
secretary of the masters' association does not hesitate to 
say that the boards work with every satisfaction. 

There is in London an association formed to prevent 



126 INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION'. 

Strikes and lockouts, known as the London Labor 
Conciliation and Arbitration Board. It was the direct 
outcome of the great strike of the dock laborers in 
London in 1889. A suggestion from the Chamber of 
Commerce to submit their differences to some sort of 
arbitration met with refusal from both parties to the dis- 
pute, but the effects of the strike were so disastrous and 
disturbing to business in London that a committee was 
appointed by the council of the Chamber of Commerce 
to investigate the whole question of labor conciliation and 
arbitration, with instructions to report, if advisable, some 
scheme for the prevention of disputes and for settling 
them if they should arise in the metropolis. So this 
board of conciliation and arbitration was organized as 
the result of the efforts of the Chamber of Commerce. 
It consists of twelve representatives chosen by the 
Chamber of Commerce, and one representative from 
each of the twelve groups into which the trades of 
London were divided. There are the building trades, 
cabinet and furnishing trades, carmen, coach, tram, 
and 'bus employees, clerks, shop assistants, and 
warehousemen, clothing trades, gas, coal, and chemi- 
cal trades, leather trades, railway workers, metal 
trades, printing and paper trades, provision and food 
trades, and shopping trades. Each trade is united 
to form a separate conciliation committee. This com- 
mittee, consisting of experts in a particular trade, is 
composed of equal numbers of employers and employed, 
chosen by their respective orders. To such a board any 
dispute in its own trade is submitted, provided the two 
sides agree to such submission. In this way any griev- 
ance can be amicably discussed before it reaches an 
acute stage. If the board is unable to reach an agree- 



INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION. 12/ 

ment it then offers facilities for arbitration, and in the 
event of this being refused the two sides retain all their 
rights to become belligerents. At first this board decided 
not to interfere in any dispute unless application came 
from the parties to the board, but it was found from ex- 
perience that it was sometimes considered a sign of 
weakness if one or the other contestant made an applica- 
tion for the good offices of the board. The latter has 
therefore adopted a rule that whenever a dispute is heard 
of as pending or about to begin, a communication be sent 
to each side inviting them to meet at the Chamber of 
Commerce. The first effort is to get the parties together, 
and, if possible, to help them in settling their differences. 
This is the method preferred, for they believe that it is 
much better for employers and employed to settle their 
differences between themselves without outside interfer- 
ence. Such a settlement is in the nature of a bargain 
after mature deliberation and careful discussion. If, 
after coming together, the parties fail to agree, then the 
board offers to appoint arbitrators and investigate the 
trouble in a regular arbitration. 

This board met for the first time on the 12th of Decem- 
ber, 1890. The amount of work done by it is somewhat 
limited, of course. The matters settled or arbitrated 
have not, as a rule, affected any considerable number of 
work-people, and yet the workings of it have been suc- 
cessful and satisfactory to those accepting its suggestion 
of mediation. The fact is that not since the board was 
organized have the services of an umpire been needed, 
nor has there been a single case of repudiation of a de- 
cision. On an average, seven or eight cases have been 
considered in one way or another by this board during 
each year since its formation. 



128 INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION, 

The method pursued by the London Chamber of Com- 
merce has been approved by the associated Chambers of 
Commerce of Great Britain, and conciliation boards have 
been formed in many of the trade centres of the king- 
dom. The lines on which they have been organized 
vary in details, but in general scope they are modelled 
after the London board. 

The secretary of the National Society of Amalgamated 
Brassworkers, in his annual report for 1898, calls atten- 
tion to the fact that the executive continues to devote 
its energies to obtain advances of wages and prices and 
to remove anomalies and grievances; that it never misses 
an opportunity to settle differences by mutual negotia- 
tion, avoiding wherever it can a trade conflict. After 
twenty-six years* experience it has been conclusively 
proved, he says, that it is far better to avert strikes and 
lockouts than to encourage or provoke them, and he 
testifies that boards of conciliation have worked to the 
advantage of employer and workmen; that differences 
which might have led to abstention from work have re- 
sulted, when discussed by both sides, in happy solutions, 
and that on no occasion have such means been unequal 
to the task of arriving at a mutual settlement. 

Again, in 1899, he reported that the executive had 
been actively engaged throughout the year in directing 
the policy of the society and its agencies, and also in 
advising the members in difficult and trying circum- 
stances; that whenever it could, it preferred to settle by 
conciliatory rather than by arbitrary means, and that in 
this spirit nearly one hundred cases of dispute had been 
adjusted to the satisfaction of employers and workmen. 
Instead of there being any abatement or lack of interest 
in its arduous labors, the secretary stated that its energies 



INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION', 1 29 

had been redoubled, to the profit and advantage of all; 
that it had occasionally sanctioned the suspension of 
labor, but that this was in cases where the employers 
wanted to force members to work under conditions 
degrading to manhood and detrimental to them as wage- 
earners. 

Prominent members of the brassworkers' society testify 
that cases of repudiation of agreement or an award are 
so exceptional that they are not worth mentioning in dis- 
cussing the system; that if the points of reference are 
agreed to on each side it is almost the invariable custom 
that all concerned carry out the decision loyally. 

Perhaps the greatest federation in all England is that 
for the Colliery Proprietors and the Miners' Federation of 
Great Britain. Since the coal strike in 1895 the joint 
board has worked harmoniously without any trade con- 
flict worthy of note. In many of the English trades 
there are boards of conciliation, and disputes are pre- 
vented in the aggregate hourly. The principle has per- 
meated and extended to all branches of trade. The 
moral effect has been to give the officials of the trade- 
union more power over their members. This has been 
used in the interest of sobriety, and also to steady the 
ardent or injudicious spirits v/ho sometimes act more 
from feeling than from a logical consideration of griev- 
ances, or grievances too insignificant to go to war on. 
This power is transmitted from the fact that the employ- 
ers act in a concentrated way through an association, 
whereas formerly they had no such association, and much 
guerilla warfare was the consequence. The men have 
gained by voluntary arbitration, and are everywhere 
strong supporters of it, being wise enough to see its 
advantages to their welfare. 



I30 INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION. 

On the Continent of Europe the experiences have not 
been so extensive as in Great Britain, yet they have been 
sufficient to testify to the moral excellence of trade con- 
ciliation and arbitration independent of governmental 
action. In Germany as well as in Austria, the inspec- 
tors of factories occupy a very prominent position in the 
industrial world, and they are peculiarly fitted to exer- 
cise a conciliatory influence upon both employers and 
employed. This influence they frequently exercise in 
the capacity of mediators, and their activity in this 
direction might even be more beneficial could they but 
overcome the distrust with which they are sometimes re- 
garded by the working people. One remarkable instance 
of mediation was the intervention of the Emperor on the 
occasion of the Westphalian strike of 1889. Such inter- 
vention, of course, necessarily differs from the mediation 
of the private individual, in that it is impossible entirely 
to divest the action of the head of the state of a some- 
what compulsory character. It cannot be doubted, 
however, that the Emperor's expressions of opinion 
contributed largely to the speedy termination of the 
strike. Efforts have been made from time to time in 
Germany to organize voluntary boards of arbitration and 
conciliation in the different industries, but, except in the 
printing trade, little has been achieved in this direction. 
The spirit, however, of the trade board is spreading in 
Germany, and the experience of different countries is 
contributing to its dissemination. 

Switzerland, a country that is always trying social and 
economic experiments, has had some experience in the 
beneficial results of private boards. One important 
organization is the Swiss Reserve Fund. Whenever a 
strike is impending, this institution conducts a thorough 



INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION, I3I 

inquiry into all the circumstances of the case and makes 
every effort to obtain a settlement. This it does either 
by negotiations with the employers or through arbitra- 
tion, and no strike receives its sanction until these means 
have proved unavailing. The association of employers 
and employed for the promotion of a common object, 
which was suggested some years ago by Herr Krebs, 
proved an excellent means of encouraging good relations 
and closer communication between capital and labor. 
Boards of conciliation and arbitration have been insti- 
tuted in connection with many of the trade-unions, and 
in some of the cantons they have been established and 
supported by the cantonal governments. The Tribunes 
of Industrial Arbitration, which were instituted at Geneva 
in 1874, consisted of a justice of the peace as president 
and two arbitrators elected respectively by the employer 
and employed. These arbitrators, however, acted from 
political motives, and hence the boards proved a failure. 
They were abolished in 1883 in order to establish Conseils 
des Prud 'homines on the French pattern. 

A law authorizing voluntary boards of arbitration and 
conciliation was passed for the Canton Vaud in 1888, 
and in the following year boards were established at 
Lausanne, Vivis, Yverdon, and Ste. Croix. x\ voluntary 
board of conciliation and arbitration was instituted by 
the Canton of Zurich in 1889. A federation was first 
formed consisting of the employers' associations and 
trade-unions of that canton and the neighborhood. Its 
object was the prompt and gratuitous settlement of all 
disputes between employer and employed with regard 
to the hire of labor and the prevention by conciliation 
of all disputes as to the payment of wages, labor con- 
tracts, and questions of apprenticeship. The cantonal 



132 INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION. 

law of Berne permits the creation of voluntary boards 
of conciliation, but in spite of petitions from both 
parties there has been no satisfactory experience under 
the law. Trade boards do not seem to have accom- 
plished much yet in Switzerland, but they are spreading 
there, and as industry expands the necessity for their 
existence will be more thoroughly felt. 

Denmark, during the summer of 1899, witnessed one 
of the sharpest labor wars of the century. There were 
no great riots or other disturbances, but growing out of 
a strike of a few carpenters in Jutland, who refused to 
observe certain regulations prescribed by their employ- 
ers, a very large majority of all the manufacturers in 
Denmark combined to crush organized labor. The em- 
ployers, through their new union, ordered a lockout, by 
which fifty thousand or more men were shut out of the 
factories. The lockout lasted through the spring and 
summer of 1899, but the opposing forces finally reasoned 
out their difficulties. So far as the workers themselves 
were concerned, their victory consisted in the fact that the 
board of arbitration which was agreed upon decided to 
refer the whole trouble back to the insignificant difficulty 
of the carpenters' strike at Jutland. So far as the em- 
ployers were concerned, their victory consisted in the fact 
that they discovered that their own interests were better 
enhanced by arranging with the representatives of organ- 
ized labor through the representatives of organized capi- 
tal. The workmen's central union accepted the services 
of a board of arbitration. The employers' union insisted 
upon the points they had proposed, and the struggle 
continued until September. The final settlement was, 
of course, a compromise, the employers giving up the 
idea of crushing the labor organizations and modifying 



INDUSTRIAL CONCIUATION. I33 

most of their demands, and the workmen recognizing 
some of the important points advanced by the employ- 
ers. It was provided in the settlement that no boycott 
should take place on either side following the signing of 
the agreement, and that all agreements when made 
should be respected and obeyed by all the organizations 
represented. The result was peace and prosperity. 
Mechanics and laborers of all classes returned to their 
tasks, and a better feeling prevailed between the em- 
ployed and employers, for each discovered the inherent 
strength of the other, resulting in mutual respect.* 

I need not refer to Italy, except to say that institu- 
tions for the settlement of disputes between labor and 
capital hardly exist in that country. There have been 
some efforts towards establishing trade boards in some 
parts of Italy, and the Labor Chambers sometimes as- 
sume the positions of arbitrators in disputes pending 
between masters and operatives. There is also a state 
board, but the experiences have not been sufficient to 
warrant any lengthy treatment. Such boards as are 
established under the law act both as boards of concilia- 
tion and as judicial courts. The board of conciliation 
is empowered to make friendly arrangements in all con- 
troversies. The arbitrators are elected by ballot by the 
whole body of manufacturers, foremen, and operatives, 
of both sexes, who have attained their majority and 
exercised their art or craft for a year, and who are neither 
criminals nor bankrupts. 

In France the experience is more enlivening, and 
more to the point perhaps, because there the parent idea 
was born in the constitution of the Conseils des Prud'- 

^ For an excellent account of the great strike in Denmark, see 
GuntofCs Magazine for April, 19CXD. 



134 INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION. 

kommes J but there are now in some trades joint boards 
of arbitration similar to those which I have designated 
as existing in England. This is especially true among 
the typographers of Marseilles. Since 1884, when there 
was more or less trouble, the most cordial relations have 
existed between the employers and workmen. Numbers 
of instances of the good work of the federation might be 
cited. Of course, there have been some unhappy ex- 
periences, but on the whole the experience has been 
fairly satisfactory. 

It is the older associations existing in France which 
show the greatest anxiety to improve the position of 
workers by pacific measures. The federation of workers 
in the book trade is a striking example of this spirit, 
wherein agreements are made for the settlement of dif- 
ficulties, the influence being to bring the two forces 
together on mutual understanding and with moral obliga- 
tions. They have central committees, and every strike 
declared without authorization of the federation must 
be at the cost of the sectional committee. 

Joint committees for conciliation have been formed, 
either by some of the mixed syndicates or by special 
arrangement between the separate syndicates in different 
trades. The joint syndical council for the paper trade 
was formed on the initiative of the employers in 1873, 
and was expressly on the model of English trade boards. 
Similar committees exist among the typographers and 
others at Rouen. Since the end of 1891 arbitration 
committees founded by the joint efforts of the syndicates 
of employers and employed in bleach-houses and laun- 
dries have been working satisfactorily for the department 
of the Seine and at Boulogne. 

Perhaps the most impressive experience under this 



INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION, 1 35 

method took place in the coal trade. During the past 
two years of 1899 and 1900 two of the most important 
strikes of the period were settled by recourse to voluntary 
arbitration. They are both of them notable examples 
of voluntary arbitration in France. The first strike was 
that of the employees of the famous iron-works of Mr. 
Schneider at Creusot, the Krupp of France. The strike 
started September 20, 1899, and included all the working 
men of the establishment. The next day it extended 
to the coal mines of Montchanin belonging to the com- 
pany, and the number of strikers was thus raised to over 
ten thousand. The demands of the men were recognition 
of the union, better fulfilment of previous engagements 
regarding wages, and more consideration on the part of 
foremen and overseers. One of the great difficulties to 
a settlement was the unwillingness of the company to 
receive the secretary of the trade-union, who was not a 
member of the company's force. 

The first part of October the men appealed to the 
government to arbitrate. The company likewise solicited 
the mediation of the government. M. Waldeck-Rous- 
seau, the Prime Minister, accepted the task, and made his 
decision October 7th, in a formal document, in which 
the reasons for each point decided were given. This 
decision was accepted and the men returned to work. 

The second strike was the general strike of coal 
miners of the Basin of the Loire during the winter of 
1 899-1 900. The causes for the strike date back to the 
fall of 1898, when the Federation of Miners' Unions of 
the Department of the Loire made a formal demand in 
writing of the mine owners for an increase in wages, 
basing their demands on the rise in the price of coal and 
consequent augmentation of profits. This demand was 



136 INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION. 

refused on the ground that as wages had not been re- 
duced when the price of coal declined they should q.ot 
be increased when the contrary movement took place, 
and, also, that the owners were under heavier burdens 
on account of the new compulsory compensation act. 
The miners were not satisfied, and began to prepare for 
a general strike. Nothing, however, was done until 
December, 1899, when the demand, coupled with others, 
was renewed and a general strike threatened. The 
company offered an increase in wages, but not equal to 
that demanded. The strike began December 26th. It 
soon became general, and affected a large number of 
mines and thousands of employees. 

December 28th the miners' union wrote to the Prefect 
of the Department proposing arbitration, each side to 
appoint an arbitrator, and if they could not agree, for 
them to select a third, an independent person. This was 
accepted by the mine owners. M. Jaures, the socialist 
leader, was summoned from Paris to represent the men, 
and M. Gruner, the secretary of the general Coal Mine 
Operators' Association, was appointed to represent the 
operators. It is exceedingly interesting that these two 
men, representing in the most extreme way labor and 
capital, respectively, should be able to come to an agree- 
ment without the intervention of a third party, and that 
their decision should be acquiesced in by both parties. 
This, however, was the case, the decision being made 
January 6, 1900. The decision was that it was just that 
the miners should profit to some extent in the increased 
prosperity enjoyed by the mine owners, and that conse- 
quently wages should be increased nine per cent., pro- 
vided that in no case should the increase be less than 
thirty nor more than fifty centimes (six to ten cents) per 



INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION. 1 37 

day. The two parties mutually agreed to keep this 
contract until June 30, 1901, at which date an arbitra- 
tion tribunal similar to the one sitting could be de- 
manded by either party to determine what future wages 
should be. A few special provisions were also made 
regarding wages in particular mines. 

In concluding this altogether too long account of 
only a few experiences in Great Britain and on the 
Continent, it may be well to state some of the more im- 
portant conclusions to which they lead us. The system 
of voluntary conciliation and arbitration, as carried on 
by private agreement, is elastic and applicable to all 
conditions. It can be used under the most elaborate or 
under the simplest rules. It can be proceeded with 
either with or without an umpire or referee, and proves 
satisfactory when the only provision is that the two sides 
shall meet and attempt to settle the difficulty before an 
appeal to harsher methods. It can succeed whether the 
questions to be decided are difficult and intricate or 
plain and simple. Contact on the boards established 
has fostered respect and good feeling. The employers, 
years ago, before the establishment of such boards, by 
holding themselves aloof created the impression that they 
were the dominant, the men the servient factor in the 
trades. They have now lost in large measure their 
autocratic characteristic, and they meet the men on" an 
equality, in a friendly, conciliatory way. Brought to- 
gether as they have been, face to face, in the meetings, 
both sides have learned to see things in a clearer light, 
and, too, false pride and obstinacy, always barriers to 
amicable understanding, have been broken down. Open 
discussion about a common table has shown points of 
view either on one side or the other not before thought 



138 INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION, 

of by the opposition, and very naturally a far better 
understanding, on the whole, exists to-day than ever 
before between employers and employed wherever the 
voluntary boards are at work, which must make for peace 
and happiness and be the basis for all negotiations be- 
tween capital and labor. Such a condition cannot be 
secured by government boards, where parties are brought 
before it in a way to leave an impression that they are 
litigants, the result often being to feed anew the fires 
which grow from the temper that originated the dispute. 
The private boards serve to allay all such feeling and to 
bring about a neighborly and harmonious condition. To 
create and continue this good feeling care must be taken 
by the associations to elect as their representatives, not 
radicals, but men of strong common-sense and honesty 
of purpose, employers fair enough to see the justice in 
the case presented by the men, and representatives of 
the men who have courage to accept a decrease when the 
situation demands it. In a word, extremists must be 
excluded and those alone chosen who seek the truth, 
and, once finding it, are willing to stand fast to the 
agreement and urge its adoption by their association; 
— and yet in the settlement of the coal strike in France 
just described the whole difficulty was referred to two 
men, one representing the most extreme side of the 
socialists and the other the most conservative side of the 
employers; but they were men of sense and judgment 
and easily came to a conclusion. 

If men and employers meet in all fairness and kind- 
ness, and are careful to arrange for co-operation and 
mutual good, many of the differences can be and are 
constantly settled without hostilities of any kind. The 
best feeling exists, and disturbances have been few 



INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION, 1 39 

where the men are treated with proper courtesy and 
frank interest, for the suspicion with which years ago the 
opposing sides viewed each other has in large measure 
disappeared in Great Britain in those trades where the 
principle of conciliation and arbitration has been longest 
recognized. Under arbitration as conducted in the 
early days the men were unable to get the facts with 
which to meet the masters* statements. In such arbitra- 
tions each side came to prove its case, and the men 
usually failed for lack of data. This was particularly 
the case in the potteries trade, where the poor success 
or failure of the men in arbitrations caused so great dis- 
satisfaction that the board was dissolved. The men felt 
they had not been given a fair hearing and could never 
succeed under existing conditions. While they might 
and perhaps did agree to the award of the umpire, it 
was a sullen and not a cheerful acquiescence. Where 
formerly it was almost impossible for the men to know 
the facts concerning the state of trade and the prices of 
raw material and the finished product, the desired in- 
formation is now secured by the aid of audits by trained 
accountants. The testimony of some manufacturers 
is to the effect that the knowledge so acquired has 
satisfied the men as nothing else could, and the confi- 
dence thus given has not been violated. This has been true 
in those instances in this country where employers have 
been willing to state to their men the exact conditions 
concerning the production of their goods, and when the 
knowledge so obtained showed that the men misunder- 
stood the conditions they have withdrawn their demands. 
In this country there are several industries that have 
had experiences similar to those related of Great Brit- 
ain and the Continent. These are particularly the boot 



I40 INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION. 

and shoe trade, the building trades, the foundry busi- 
ness, coal mining, and some others. The experience 
has not been so extensive, of course, as that abroad, but 
it has been sufficient to convince many people that each 
trade can settle its own troubles with much more satis- 
factory results than it can by outside parties. 

Personally, I have always been in favor of boards of 
arbitration of any kind. Any board that will aid in 
bringing about conciliatory efforts, and, failing in them, 
rational and discreet arbitration, has appealed to me as 
a method to be desired, not as a solution of the great 
labor struggle but as a help of vast importance, and I 
still feel that the existence of a board of conciliation and 
arbitration established by States, to which resort can be 
had voluntarily, has a balancing effect morally in the 
community. Nevertheless, I do not hesitate to declare 
that the real results to be reached by arbitration and 
conciliation can be secured far more effectively and in 
a far more acceptable manner through the trade board 
as it exists to-day in nearly all the industries of England 
than by any other means. 

It is for this reason that I have recited some of the 
principal experiences in the great trades in England and 
on the Continent. Such experiences must have a far 
greater effect than any abstract treatment of the doctrine 
of conciliation and arbitration. The doctrine is all right, 
but what we wish to know in this country is just how the 
doctrine works when practically applied, and the experi- 
ences I have recited teach us that there never was a time 
in industrial affairs in England when both sides were 
better organized, and never did they work together with 
such harmony. These experiences are positive results, 
and positive results need but little comment. 



TRADE CONCILIATION AND ARBITRATION 
IN THE UNITED STATES. 

BY E. DANA DURAND, SECRETARY OF THE INDUSTRIAL 
COMMISSION. 

I HAVE been asked briefly to describe the existing 
practices in our own country as regards negotiation, 
between employers and employees, within the trades 
themselves, — what may be somewhat roughly termed 
**trade conciliation and arbitration." In so doing I de- 
sire to refrain from expressing judgments as to principles. 

The United States Industrial Commission, of which I 
have the honor to be the Secretary, is engaged in a 
thorough investigation of arbitration and conciliation. 
It has been so fortunate as to secure the testimony on 
this subject of a large number of representatives of State 
boards of arbitration, of employers and officers of asso- 
ciations of employers, and of representatives of trade- 
unions. It has had before it in particular prominent 
representatives of practically all the trades in which 
peaceful methods for adjusting the relations of employers 
and employees have been most highly developed. More- 
over, it has by correspondence and by the use of published 
information collected a large amount of material on this 
subject. It is making studies of arbitration and concilia- 
tion in foreign countries/ 

Strictly speaking the word ^^arbitration" applies only to 
^ See vol. xvii., Reports Industrial Commission, — Ed. 
141 



142 INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION. 

the comparatively rare cases where disputes are referred 
by the parties to some disinterested person or persons 
for authoritative decision. The term ** conciliation " 
accurately describes the great variety of efforts of em- 
ployers and employees to come to an amicable agreement 
among themselves without calling in outside assistance. 
Conciliation is much broader than arbitration. Arbitra- 
tion proper is almost always preceded by attempts at con- 
ciliation; while conciliatory methods are often employed 
with no provision for calling in arbitrators at all. The 
greater part of what I have to say accordingly relates to 
methods rather of conciliation than of arbitration in the 
narrower sense. It may be noted that the term **col- 
lective bargaining'' seems to be coming into increasing 
use to describe methods of negotiation directly between 
employers and employees, especially in fixing the more 
important terms of the labor contract. 

While public attention is usually directed especially to 
the more formal and permanent systems of conciliation, 
which have as yet been established in comparatively few 
trades in the United States, we must not lose sight of the 
fact that in countless cases, including almost every in- 
dustry, peaceful settlements of differences as to the terms 
of labor are secured by less formal methods of negotia- 
tion. These methods take on many varying forms. As 
a matter of fact, wherever working men are organized, 
and wherever that organization is recognized by an em- 
ployer, the terms of the labor contract cease to be de- 
termined solely and in every instance by the dictate of 
the employer, by the dictate of the employees, or by 
victory in strike or lockout. Under these two condi- 
tions, negotiation and conciliation enter in to a greater 
or less degree. 



INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION, I43 

A very large number of trade-unions have in their 
constitutions declarations of a general character to the 
effect that strikes are in themselves undesirable and 
should be resorted to only in extreme cases, ** after the 
failure,'* to quote a common phrase, "of all honorable 
attempts at peaceful settlement " ; and that conciliation 
and arbitration should be sought wherever possible. 
These expressions are so strong in many cases as to 
seem to commit the union most unequivocally to a 
conciliatory policy. Moreover, trade-union rules, prob- 
ably without exception, provide that attempts at ne- 
gotiation with employers shall be made before any strike 
is entered upon. Either the regular officers of the 
union, or specially chosen committees, are required to 
confer with employers, if the employers will permit it, 
regarding the demands and grievances. Such con- 
ferences are frequently designated by the unions as 
** arbitration," and such committees as ^^arbitration com- 
mittees.*' The provisions regarding them are often 
quite elaborate. 

These provisions of trade-union constitutions and 
rules however by no means always indicate a truly con- 
ciliatory spirit on the part of the great body of the mem- 
bers. It is frequently the case that the representatives 
of the unions, the so-called arbitration committees, ap- 
proach employers in an attitude by no means calcu- 
lated to promote a peaceful settlement. Just so, on the 
other hand, employers often meet the representatives of 
their men, but are unwilling to make any concessions 
or to treat with them in a truly amicable manner. 
Nevertheless there are many instances where expressions 
in trade-union rules of the character referred to spring 
from a really conciliatory spirit among the members. 



144 INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION. 

There are many employers, and the number seems to be 
constantly increasing, who are prepared to deal with 
their employees in the same spirit. To the degree to 
which these conditions prevail, peaceful negotiation 
tends to supplant conflict. The importance of these 
informal methods must not be underestimated. They 
are found more or less in connection with every trade, 
and they widen their scope and increase their effective- 
ness with every advance in intelligence among employers 
or employees. 

Informal conciliation of this sort is especially effective 
in those trades in which the local unions are united into 
strong national bodies. When a national organization 
pays benefits to the members of local unions on strike, 
the national officers are naturally given a very consider- 
able degree of control over the inauguration of strikes. 
The constitutions of well established national unions 
usually refuse to sanction any strike unless all the fol- 
lowing steps have first been taken: first, thorough efforts 
at negotiation with employers on the part of the local 
unions affected; second, a determination, by a two 
thirds or three fourths majority of the local members, on 
secret ballot, to insist on the demands made; next, ap- 
proval by the national officers of the position the locals 
have taken ; and finally, the most exhaustive efforts on 
the part of these officers, in person or by deputy, to 
obtain a peaceful settlement of the differences. These 
national officers are in many cases men of high intelli- 
gence and of long experience as to labor disputes. They 
are largely free from the personal feeling and the narrow- 
ness which are apt to characterize the local unions in 
their conflicts with employers. By their intervention 
accordingly they are often able to prevent strikes or to 



II^DUSTRIAL CONCILIATION, I45 

secure satisfactory settlement of disputes by conciliatory 
methods. Perhaps the most noteworthy success in this 
direction has been attained by the conservative and in- 
telligent officers of the Bricklayers* and Masons' Inter- 
national Union. 

American experience shows clearly that organization 
among employers makes possible higher forms of negotia- 
tion as to the terms of employment than can exist merely 
between individual employers and organized laborers. 
The formation of associations of employers in this 
country has lagged far behind the development of unions 
among working men. Gradually, however, doubtless in 
part under the pressure of organized labor, employers 
in not a few trades have come to realize the advantages 
of system.atic collective action in their dealings with em- 
ployees, not only in giving additional strength, but also 
in securing more uniform cost of labor and consequently 
more equal competition. Where such associations of 
employers exist, conciliatory methods are more often 
found than where employers deal as individuals with the 
unions. 

It is a common custom in many trades to make written 
agreements, usually annual, regarding the terms of labor. 
They are made by labor organizations either with in- 
dividual employers or with associations of employers. 
They regulate wages, hours, overtime, time of paying 
wages, apprenticeship, and often a considerable number 
of minor details. A not uncommon provision is that 
only members of the trade-union shall be employed, 
while associations of employers occasionally make the 
counter-stipulation that the men shall work only for 
members of the association. 

The great majority of agreements of this type are 



146 INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION. 

local, covering a single establishment or a single town or 
city. Such local agreements are quite common in the 
various building trades. They are very general also 
among the brewery workmen, the hotel employees, the 
bakers, the hatters, the metal polishers, the garment 
workers, the granite cutters, the electrical workers, and 
several other classes of workmen, while they are found 
less frequently in many other trades. 

It must not be supposed that such joint agreements 
necessarily show a highly developed spirit or system of 
conciliation. It is true that a considerable proportion 
of the agreements provide for arbitration of disputes as 
to their interpretation or violation — usually by a com- 
mittee consisting of an equal number of representatives 
of each side, with, in many cases, an impartial person to 
be selected by them as umpire. It is true also that 
minor matters are often satisfactorily settled by these 
arbitration committees. On the other hand, such com- 
mittees are not usually permanent, but are left to be 
selected for each special emergency. Their decisions 
often have little binding force. Even the terms of the 
agreements themselves are quite frequently violated, 
secretly or openly, by one party or the other. In the 
building trades it is often stipulated that sympathetic 
strikes shall not be considered a violation of agreement. 
Finally such agreements usually fail to provide formally 
for their own renewal by conciliatory methods. They 
do not establish a joint board, or other system for secur- 
ing regular and amicable discussion as to the general 
terms of the future labor contract. As a matter of fact, 
apparently, a considerable proportion of these joint 
agreements are proposed in the first instance by the trade- 
unions^ with a demand that the employers sign them, 



INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION, 147 

under threat of a strike in the event of failure to 
do so. 

Despite these defects which appear in some instances 
this system of local joint agreements has in many cases 
accomplished noteworthy results in checking strikes and 
lockouts and in promoting really conciliatory relations 
between employers and employees. Although agree- 
ments may at times be violated, they usually serve to 
prevent, so long as they continue, actual cessation of 
work on account of labor disputes. The provision for 
conciliation and arbitration as to minor matters, which 
is so commonly found, tends to bring masters and men 
into personal contact, and to create a spirit which shall 
render possible also peaceful negotiations as to the gen- 
eral terms of employment. The existence of a written 
agreement itself tends to foster some recognition of one 
another's rights. Indeed in many cases, although no 
permanent joint conferences or committees for drawing 
up agreements are formally provided for, they are never- 
theless actually drawn up in amicable conference; they 
represent mutual concession between informally chosen 
representatives of the respective sides. Under such cir- 
cumstances the joint agreement system becomes an im- 
portant and effective method of furthering industrial 
peace. 

Among the few instances of permanent and formal 
systems of collective bargaining or conciliation of a 
purely local character are those in the building 
trades, and these are mainly confined to the brick- 
layers and masons. The National Association of 
Builders, of which Mr. W. H. Sayward has long been 
the Secretary and the most active force, fully ten years 
ago recommended to the various local associations of 



148 INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION, 

contracting builders represented in the national organi- 
zation that they should establish joint boards of arbitra- 
tion and conciliation. The recommendation has been 
carried out only to a very limited extent. The system 
has been established most fully in Mr. Sayward's own 
city of Boston, where permanent agreements have been 
made by the builders with the bricklayers and masons, 
the hod-carriers and two or three other trades, providing 
for joint committees which shall annually frame con- 
tracts as to the terms of labor, and which shall also 
decide disputes arising from time to time. These agree- 
ments further provide for the appointment of an impartial 
umpire to decide cases where the committees themselves 
fail to agree; a thing which is very unusual in this 
country. As a matter of fact umpires have been called 
in two or three times to decide relatively important mat- 
ters. The result of this system has been that for more 
than a decade there have been no strikes in Boston in the 
trades covered by it, while the existence of these methods 
in part of the building trades is reported to have had a 
powerful effect in checking strikes and lockouts in the 
others also. 

In New York City also a joint agreement of this sort 
has existed for a considerable number of years between 
the Mason Builders' Association and the various unions 
of bricklayers and masons, and the system has been in- 
troduced to some extent in other building trades in that 
city. Here again strikes have been practically abolished 
in the trades affected. 

Somewhat formal systems of local conciliation and 
arbitration have also existed from time to time in the 
boot and shoe trade, and during their persistence have 
been reasonably effective in promoting peaceful rela- 



INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION. I49 

tions. At present the only system of this sort which 
covers more than a single establishment is found in 
Philadelphia, where a joint board has been formed by 
the local organizations of manufacturers and of opera- 
tives. This Philadelphia board, which has existed about 
fifteen years, is, however, severely criticised by the 
National Union of Boot and Shoe Workers, as being too 
much under the control of the employers. The national 
union itself has joint agreements with many important 
individual manufacturers. These agreements regulate 
the conditions of labor and provide for the reference of 
disputes to joint committees and umpires or to the State 
board of arbitration. 

The practice of peaceful negotiation has been very 
highly developed between the railroad companies and 
the more skilled and more highly organized classes of 
their employees. The brotherhoods of conductors, 
engineers, firemen, and trainmen especially embrace 
very nearly all the members of their respective crafts. 
Over against them stand great railroad systems, which 
are in a position to negotiate effectively, and which need 
the assurance of uninterrupted service that can be 
obtained only in this way. It is the practice of each of 
these strong brotherhoods to establish for each railroad 
system a committee composed of representatives of the 
various local lodges or divisions along the road. These 
committees, which not infrequently employ trained and 
salaried experts to assist them, confer with employers, 
not merely as to minor matters of dispute arising under 
the existing terms of employment, but also as regards 
the conditions of future labor. No strike can be author- 
ized except after efforts at settlement by these commit- 
tees, or, in case they fail, by the national officers of the 



I50 INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION-. 

brotherhoods themselves. On many important railroads 
this system of negotiation is supplemented by written 
agreements as to the terms of labor. The result of these 
methods is that strikes are of rare occurrence among the 
more skilled branches of the railway service. The same 
system of negotiation and joint agreements exists, to some 
extent but in a much less developed form, among the 
less skilled and less strongly organized railroad em- 
ployees. 

Finally we come to consider the systems of collective 
bargaining, conciliation, and arbitration which are of 
more general scope than those so far described. In 
several important trades annual joint agreements as to the 
conditions of labor, especially wage scales, are regularly 
adopted, which cover either the whole trade throughout 
the country, or a large fraction of it. For the adoption 
of these agreements, more or less formal methods of 
negotiation have been established, and in some trades 
highly elaborated machinery for the settlement of dis- 
putes has been introduced. 

This system of joint agreements on a large scale was 
first established in the iron and steel trades represented 
in the Amalgamated Association of Iron, Steel, and Tin 
Workers. There the practice dates from the sixties. 
Quite recently some classes of tin-plate workers have 
formed a separate association and adopted a system in 
close imitation of that of the Amalgamated Association. 
Since 1891 a joint agreement has existed between the 
Stove Founders' National Defence Association and the 
Iron Moulders' Union. This agreement itself contains 
a number of general provisions as to the terms of labor. 
Local and district conciliation committees are estab- 
lished. Any dispute may, after failure of efforts to settle 



INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION, 15I 

it locally, be referred to a central committee composed of 
equal numbers of employers and employees. This com- 
mittee also adopts annual agreements as to matters of 
common concern to the entire trade. More recently 
this system in some of its features has been copied by 
the National Founders' Association in its dealings with 
the Iron Moulders' Union. During the present year the 
machinery manufacturers, organized into the National 
Metal Trades Association, have entered into an agree- 
ment with the International Association of Machinists, 
following closely the methods of the organizations of 
foundrymen.* In the various branches of the glass trade 
annual wage scales and joint conferences have been 
customary for many years. The potters have established 
methods very similar to those of the glass workers. The 
largest body of working men affected by a system of 
joint agreements and conciliation of this kind is the 
bituminous coal miners of the four great central coal 
States, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois. Joint 
agreements in the coal industry, indeed, have existed 
from time to time for the past thirty years, but the 
system never acquired a firm hold or was thoroughly 
organized until within the past three or four years. 
The longshoremen on the Great Lakes also hold joint 
conferences with various organizations of employers, 
and adopt annual agreements, which provide also for 
settlement of minor disputes. 

Such wide-reaching methods of negotiation as to the 
terms of labor are found only in trades where both sides 
are strongly organized. The agreements reached pur- 
port to bind a large proportion of the employers and 
employees in the industry. Naturally those on either 
* This system was afterwards broken up. 



152 INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION. 

side will be disposed to abide by the agreements only if 
they are represented in the association by which they 
are made. Again the national, or general, conferences 
between the representatives of the respective organiza- 
tions are for the most part more systematic and formal 
than those by which local agreements are reached. In 
some instances there are regularly established joint com- 
mittees, consisting of an equal number of representatives 
of the employers and of the employees. In the case of 
the two systems in the foundry trades, and of that in 
the machinery trade, these committees can (at least 
nominally) make decisions by majority vote. In one or 
two other instances, as in the coal trade, it is required 
that every important action shall be by unanimous vote 
of the joint committee; that is, the representatives of 
each side practically act as a unit and come to an agree- 
ment by mutual concession. In the glass and the iron 
and steel trades the conferences themselves are less 
formally organized. No attempt is made to secure an 
equal number of representatives of the two sides, and 
agreements must be reached by mutual consent rather 
than by formal vote. It is noteworthy that in none of 
the national systems we have mentioned is it the practice 
to refer any differences as to the general terms of labor to 
a disinterested arbitrator. There is, to be sure, a pro- 
vision, in two or three of the systems, that minor matters, 
especially as to the interpretation of the general agree- 
ments, shall, if necessary, be referred to an outside 
person. Both employers and employees seem to be 
distinctly opposed to the idea of allowing any person 
who is not connected with the trade and familiar with 
all its complicated conditions to determine the conditions 
of labor, unless under the most extreme circumstances. 



INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION. 1 53 

The general conferences of which we have been 
speaking are chiefly occupied with determining broad 
questions, with establishing the general terms of the 
labor contract. But where the policy of conciliation as 
to these matters exists, there is naturally a disposition to 
settle the lesser questions also in an amicable manner. 
In the trades under consideration minor disputes are for 
the most part satisfactorily adjusted by local negotiation 
between the parties directly concerned, or sometimes by 
joint committees of conciliation and arbitration more 
or less formally constituted. In several trades there is 
opportunity for appeal to the national officers or repre- 
sentatives of the respective organizations of employers 
and employees. In the stove foundry trade, for in- 
stance, the same board which adopts annual agreements 
may act on any such appeal. Among some branches of 
the iron and steel trade certain technical differences of a 
minor character are left largely to the decision of a paid 
and trained adjuster. 

The iron and steel trades present the only successful 
illustration in the United States of the system of sliding 
scales. For many years the wages paid for certain 
classes of work in these industries have been made to 
vary in proportion to the rise and fall of the prices of the 
products. The system is considered highly satisfactory 
by both employers and employees, although the latter 
insist that they would not be willing to accept it without 
the provision fixing a minimum below which wages shall 
not fall. The sliding scale has been used more or less 
extensively in the anthracite coal fields, but for various 
reasons the system as established there has almost from 
the outset been extremely distasteful to the employees. In 
Great Britain sliding scales are somewhat more common. 



154 INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION, 

The American experience as regards joint agreements 
and conciliation on a large scale is thus limited to a com- 
paratively few trades, and in several of these is as yet 
only very recent. England has developed the system far 
more extensively. Even the experience in this country 
goes far toward showing that strikes and lockouts may 
be largely done away with where conferences and agree- 
ments between strong national organizations of employers 
and employees exist. Agreements between national or- 
ganizations have been less often violated during their 
term than local agreements. The officers of national 
associations, both of employers and employees, are 
usually men of sound judgment and of long experience. 
Especially where these officers come in frequent contact 
with one another under such a system of conferences 
as we have been describing, they acquire wisdom in 
their treatment of labor matters. Each side learns to 
respect the other. Thus, after a time, negotiations are 
likely to become thoroughly amicable and businesslike, 
while these same officers who are most active in framing 
agreements are usually able to keep the members of their 
associations in line in ratifying them and abiding by 
them. The conference committees seldom fail to agree 
as to the annual labor contract, and there is seldom any 
refusal on the part of the body of employers or of working 
men to sanction the agreement. Occasionally, to be 
sure, strikes or lockouts occur in connection with the 
adoption of new agreements, but when the system of 
joint conferences is once thoroughly established, it 
ususally produces a spirit on both sides which greatly 
lessens the likelihood of industrial warfare. 



CONFERENCES OF IRON MOULDERS' AND 
FOUNDERS' ASSOCIATIONS. 

BY MARTIN FOX, PRESIDENT OF THE IRON MOULDERS* 
UNION OF NORTH AMERICA. 

ALL who have given the subject of strikes and labor 
disputes any consideration must agree that they 
are indications of discontent on the part of the workers, 
against the wages or conditions under which they are 
required to labor by the employing interests. As indus- 
tries have expanded and become more diversified with 
the progress of the century, the friction between the two 
factors of industry has increased. Competition became 
keener; it became necessary to economize at every pos- 
sible point, in order to maintain a position in the market. 
Wages, while labor remained in an unorganized condi- 
tion, was always one of the first points on which the 
economizing policy was applied. It was not surprising, 
therefore, that the individual laborer, finding himself thus 
at the mercy of changing conditions, should have seen in 
combination an effective force with which to protect him- 
self. In the latter half of the century, trade-unions 
grew rapidly in power. Their earlier efforts were con- 
ducted on the more primitive methods of might being 
right. The employer and the employee seemed to re- 
gard each other as natural enemies, and the antagonism, 
of course, extended to the organization of the employee, 

155 



156 INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION. 

with the result that the efforts of the employing interests 
were often directed towards crushing the organizations 
of labor; and, on the other hand, I will frankly admit, 
when the time was opportune, instances are not lacking 
where organizations of labor have forced arbitrary con- 
ditions upon the employers. 

Such a condition of affairs could not always prevail. 
Bitter experience, and a more intelligent conception of 
the labor problem, convinced the more broad-minded 
element of both sides to the controversy that justice 
could never be done, nor could satisfactory relations 
ever be established between the employer and the em- 
ployee, by a policy in which each was disposed to push 
his advantage to the utmost, without regard to the in- 
terests or welfare of the other. It was realized, too, that 
while the employer's capital was invested in an industry, 
the workman's capital, in the shape of his labor, was 
also invested in it, and that there was a mutual interest 
in its success. 

It is scarcely necessary to point out that strikes were 
extremely unprofitable to both interests involved, and 
that, notwithstanding their success or non-success, they 
invariably left behind a bitter feeling, which augured ill 
for the future harmony of the working force and the 
management, which, it will be admitted, was not con- 
ducive to the best results of their co-operation. 

The Iron Moulders' Union, which I have the honor 
to represent as its President, has had its full experience 
of strikes since its organization in 1859. In 1886 a new 
element was interjected into the industrial warfare which 
it had ceaselessly waged. It was in the stove-manufac- 
turing branch of the iron-moulding trade. Learning, 
no doubt, the lesson the workman had learned — that in 



INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION, 1 57 

combination they possessed greater power of offence or 
defence than when they acted in their individual capacity 
— the stove manufacturers, who had for some years 
been associated for the purpose of discussing matters of 
general interest to the industry, formed what is known 
as the Stove Founders' National Defence Association. 
In the year 1887, that Association and the Iron Mould- 
ers' Union of North America first clashed. The struggle 
was a bitter one, and while at its conclusion neither side 
could claim a decisive victory, it left each with a better 
appreciation of the other's power, and emphasized the 
disastrous results that might be expected to ensue from 
a series of conflicts between such powerful associations. 
The active spirits of both finally met in conference, in 
189T, and the result was the formulation of what I be- 
lieve to be the first agreement in this country which pro- 
vided for the application of the principles of voluntary 
arbitration — or perhaps it might be better named volun- 
tary conciliation — in disputes arising between members 
of an employers' association and members of a trade- 
union. This agreement simply recited general principles 
and provided means for their practical application to 
trade problems as they were known to exist by the 
representatives of the two associations. The following 
extract from that first agreement will place the matter 
more clearly before you : 

" Resolved, That this meeting adopt the principle of arbitration 
in the settlement of any dispute between the members of the I. M. 
U. of N. A. and the members of the S. F. N. D. A. ; 

" That a conference committee be formed, consisting of six mem- 
bers, three of whom shall be stove moulders appointed by the Iron 
Moulders' Union of North America, and three persons appointed by 
the S. F. N. D. A., all to hold their offices from May i to April 
30 of each year. 



158 INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION. 

*' Whenever there is a dispute between a member of the S. F. N. 
D. A. and the moulders in his employ, and it cannot be settled 
amicably between them, it shall be referred to the presidents of the 
two associations before named, who shall themselves or by delegates 
give it due consideration. If they cannot decide it satisfactorily to 
themselves, they may, by mutual agreement, summon the confer- 
ence committee, to whom the dispute shall be referred, and whose 
decision by a majority vote shall be final and binding upon each 
party for the term of twelve months. 

"Pending adjudication by the presidents and conference com- 
mittee, neither party to the dispute shall discontinue operations, but 
shall proceed with business in the ordinary manner.'* 

The wage rate, being the most prolific source of fric- 
tion, was the one most carefully provided for. There 
were other matters, affecting shop management and con- 
ditions, upon which at this time no agreement was pos- 
sible, and it was wisely determined to allow time, and 
the education which must result from annual contact and 
conference, to bring its influence to bear, before at- 
tempting to secure an understanding upon them. 

It gives me pleasure to say — and the members of this 
National Civic Federation will agree that it is a striking 
proof of the success of the application of a policy of 
conciliation in the stove-manufacturing industry — that, 
since the 1891 agreement was ratified, there has been no 
conflict between members of the two associations, and 
no dispute that has arisen has refused to yield to the 
application of its provisions. 

While this was the first practical application of the 
principles of arbitration to disputes arising in any branch 
of our trade, I might add that as early as 1876 a referen- 
dum vote of the membership of the Iron Moulders' Union 
had declared in favor of the arbitration of trade disputes, 
but had not been able to successfully put this policy in 



INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION. 1 59 

operation, because there was no association of employ- 
ers with whom to enter into such a contract. When a 
dispute arose between a stove manufacturer and his men, 
and negotiations between their immediate representatives 
failed, there was at once an open rupture, and when 
that has occurred, it is difficult, indeed, to arbitrate. In 
the agreement to which I have referred, cognizance was 
taken of that fact, and one of its clauses provided that 
the members of neither association should be governed 
by their impulses, but — and I desire to emphasize the 
point — should remain at work pending investigation by 
the proper officers of the two associations. 

From my experience with this successful attempt at 
conciliation and arbitration of industrial differences, I 
am led to deduce: 

First — That both the employing and employed in- 
terests must be organized into associations which sub- 
scribe to the principle that capital and labor have an 
equal voice in the fixing of wages and conditions of 
labor, before the principles of conciliation or voluntary 
arbitration can be successfully applied. 

Second — That the more thorough that organization, 
on both sides, the better the ultimate results. 

Third — That work should continue, without interrup- 
tion, pending arbitration. 

Fourth — That, inasmuch as it is only through the 
existence of an organization of the working men inter- 
ested that arbitration can be successfully undertaken, 
employers should encourage their growth and extension. 

Fifth — That when the dispute arises over some tech- 
nical detail of a trade, upon which there has been no 
general agreement on the part of the associations of 
employers and workmen, a conciliatory policy should 



l6o INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION. 

be pursued by both parties, and an effort made to settle 
by common-sense methods, with a due regard to the 
custom and precedent of the locality in which the dis- 
pute arises. 

Our success in applying the principles of voluntary 
arbitration in disputes arising in the stove trade inclined 
us to view with some gratification the tendency of the 
foundrymen in other branches of the trade to form an 
association on the same lines as the Stove Founders' 
National Defence Association. And when the National 
Founders* Association was finally launched on its career, 
I, as President of the Iron Moulders* Union, made ad- 
vances, with a view to consummating an agreement 
such as we already had in the stove trade. These 
advances were met in a friendly spirit, and in March, 
1899, representatives of the two associations met in New 
York, and ratified the following agreement, since known 
as the ** New York Agreement **: 

'* Whereas, The past experience of the members of the National 
Founders' Association and the Iron Moulders' Union of North 
America justifies them in the opinion that any arrangement entered 
into that will conduce to the greater harmony of their relations as 
employers and employees will be to their mutual advantage ; there- 
fore be it 

*' Resolved, That this Committee of Conference endorse the 
principle of arbitration in the settlement of trade disputes, and 
recommend the same for adoption by the members of the National 
Founders' Association and the Iron Moulders Union of North 
America on the following lines : 

' ' That in the event of a dispute arising between members of the 
respective organizations, a reasonable effort shall be made by the 
parties directly at interest to effect a satisfactory adjustment of 
the difficulty ; failing to do which, either party shall have the right 
to ask its reference to a Committee of Arbitration, which shall con- 
sist of the presidents of the N. F. A. and the I. M. U. of N. A., or 



INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION. l6l 

their representatives, and two other representatives from each 
association appointed by the respective presidents. 

" The finding of this Committee of Arbitration, by majority vote, 
shall be considered final, in so far as the future action of the re- 
spective organizations is concerned. 

'* Pending adjudication by the Committee of Arbitration, there 
shall be no cessation of work at the instance of either party to the 
dispute. 

" The Committee of Arbitration shall meet within two weeks after 
reference of the dispute to them." 

This agreement, it will be seen, did not go any further 
than to recite the faith of each party in the principle of 
conciliation and arbitration, and provide the necessary 
machinery through which to give it practical effect. No 
attempt was made to effect an understanding upon mat- 
ters of technical detail. That was considered a wise 
policy, for, unlike the stove manufacturers* association, 
which represented only those who were engaged in the 
same industry, the National Founders* Association prac- 
tically admitted to membership any foundryman who 
was not a member of the other association. Thus it had 
a composite membership, representing foundries whose 
methods and necessities were not identical, and it would 
be extremely difficult, under these circumstances, to 
formulate agreements of a general character, capable of 
meeting all exigencies which might arise in the shops of 
a membership of such a varied character. For a time, 
the two associations confined their efforts to a considera- 
tion of wage disputes, and were fairly successful, although 
one serious weakness was early detected, in the disposi- 
tion of a number of the members of the National Found- 
ers* Association to refuse recognition to the trade-union of 
their moulders. That recognition, as I have previously 
shown, is, next to the fact of an organization of the two 



1 62 INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION. 

interests, one of the chief requisites to the success of the 
principles we had subscribed to. Later on, attempts were 
made by representatives of the National Founders* Asso- 
ciation and the Iron Moulders* Union, in conference, to 
come to an understanding upon questions vitally affecting 
the interests of both parties, in matters of shop practice 
and conditions of labor, and, in the opinion of the union 
representatives, vitally affecting the integrity of their 
organization, but were unsuccessful and led to the most 
strained relations between the two associations, which 
culminated, later, in an open rupture in an important 
section of the joint jurisdiction. It is true the New 
York Agreement is still operative in other sections of the 
jurisdiction, but it can well be understood that, with 
each association bending its every effort to defeat the 
other in the city of Cleveland, O., the principles of arbi- 
tration, to which each has subscribed, cannot be applied 
as effectively as they could if a more happy state of 
affairs existed. 

It would not advance the purposes of this conference 
to go into the details of these points of serious difference 
between the two associations, but, in order to demon- 
strate what I consider another essential factor to the 
success of voluntary arbitration, I will simply state that 
one of the provisions of the resolutions to which the 
representatives of the Iron Moulders' Union were asked 
to subscribe was such as would, in its operation, 
seriously affect its prestige, and its ability to enforce 
discipline among its members and preserve its integrity. 
At least, that was, and is, the opinion of the thinking 
element of that union, and, as can well be understood, 
was destructive of confidence in the purposes of the em- 
ployers* association. Confidence in the honesty of pur- 



INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION, 1 63 

pose of each party is, without doubt, an essential factor 
to the success of arbitration of trade disputes. Destroy 
it — or even arouse a suspicion — and the effectiveness of 
any policy of arbitration is seriously endangered. 

Here, then, we have two examples of attempts at 
voluntary arbitration of trade disputes in the foundry 
industry — one, successful; the other, partially unsuc- 
cessful. A comparison of the policies pursued in each 
case will assist the student of the industrial problem to 
conceive the dangers which threaten the success of all 
policies involving arbitration, and will show by practical 
demonstration, more clearly than I can do in words, that, 
unless the last remnant of that antagonism which existed 
between the employer and the employee in the earlier 
days of our industrial development be removed and em- 
ployers and employers' associations give organizations 
of labor (which, alone, can assist them in the successful 
application of the principles of voluntary arbitration in 
industrial disputes) the fullest recognition and encour- 
agement, we can never hope to see the fullest success of 
its beneficent principles. It may be thought that these 
sentiments are the sentiments of a trade-unionist. They 
are — and, as such, are the sentiments of a class of men 
who have given the subject a longer and more inter- 
ested consideration than any other class of the com- 
munity. They are not entirely selfish in their character, 
but are the deductions of long experience and earnest 
thought in the labor movement. 

Before proceeding to the consideration of compulsory 
arbitration, permit me to point out that, under a system 
of conciliation or voluntary arbitration such as I have 
outlined, it is made mandatory that the parties immedi- 
ately interested in any dispute make an earnest effort to 



164 INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION. 

settle, themselves, before referring it to outsiders. It is 
true, the mere existence of an agreement which provides 
for the arbitration of disputes in any trade has a tend- 
ency to lessen the seriousness of the effort made by the 
original disputants to settle, because they know that 
failure to agree does not immediately involve them in a 
strike. This is a regrettable feature, but is, after all, 
only primary in its character, and when it is found, after 
a few experiences, that as good terms can be secured by 
their own efforts as can be secured, as a rule, by arbi- 
tration, only the more serious disputes will find their way 
to the arbitrators, who, under this system, are always 
practical men, thoroughly conversant with the subjects 
which are likely to be brought to their consideration. 

It might not be amiss, at this stage, to say that in the 
event of an industry coming under the control of one 
immense corporation, and each branch or plant thereof 
being simply the part of one great whole, it would be an 
almost impossible proposition to operate successfully 
under such an arrangement as that already quoted. It 
would no longer be possible to secure a committee of 
disinterested employers, thoroughly conversant with the 
industry and identified with it, to act on the board of 
conciliation or arbitration, and this is one of the strong 
features of the arrangement under discussion. We can- 
not arbitrate in this way with a trust controlling the 
entire industry, although we might with a number of 
smaller combinations controlling the industry in differ- 
ent sections of the country. In such an emergency, if 
the principles of arbitration are to govern, I incline to 
the belief that the State or national government would 
have to provide the necessary machinery. 

Having dwelt at some length, already, upon practical 



INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION. 165 

examples of the operation of a system of voluntary arbi- 
tration in the iron-moulding industry, I will be brief in 
my remarks upon compulsory arbitration. It will have 
been gathered from my utterances that I am a strong 
adherent of the voluntary system. Organized labor never 
assumes the position " there is nothing to arbitrate," and 
it requires no compulsory law to induce it to submit its 
case to a tribunal competent to adjudicate upon it, when 
its plea involves one of wages or conditions. 

There is something about the idea of compulsion that 
is repugnant to American conceptions of liberty of 
action, and it is not difficult to conceive a case in 
which working men would be compelled to work under 
conditions, or for wages, that were obnoxious to them. 
I recognize, of course, that, were it possible always to 
guarantee a tribunal to adjudicate upon a dispute which 
could and would do full justice to all interests, compul- 
sion both in arbitrating and in enforcing the award could 
be justified. We know, however, that among men as at 
present constituted, such a guaranty is impossible. We 
know, also, that there is not a perfect community of 
understanding among the classes, upon what is called 
the labor problem. That being the case, it would be an 
extremely difficult matter to constitute a court of arbi- 
tration which would have the entire confidence of the 
interests involved, and, hence, to secure a court whose 
finding would give satisfaction. I am strongly of the 
conviction that, in a country like the United States, 
where there are so many diverse interests, so many di- 
verse views, and so many instances in which the interests 
of capital are placed before those of labor, compulsory 
arbitration is thoroughly impractical, and its principle is 
thoroughly obnoxious to the American citizen. The 



l66 INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION. 

citizen cannot afford to lend his assent to any govern- 
mental institution which, in the capacity of a court 
having power to enforce its award, could compel him to 
submit to conditions of labor which are obnoxious to 
him, under penalty of fine or loss of liberty. Especially 
is it objectionable, when, in a system of voluntary arbi- 
tration, such as has been outlined in this paper, there is 
as yet ample provision both for the preservation of 
industrial peace and the dispensation of justice in 
industrial disputes. 

I would not be consistent, after having assumed this 
attitude to compulsory arbitration in general industrial 
enterprises, were I to endorse its application in disputes 
of those engaged in enterprises of a quasi-public char- 
acter, such as steam or street railways. I am willing to 
admit that, inasmuch as the public are more deeply in- 
terested in this instance, and are often grievously incon- 
venienced by reason of disputes arising between the 
employees and the management engaged in the opera- 
tion of enterprises of this character, there is more 
justification for such governmental interference as would 
be involved in this limited form of compulsory arbitra- 
tion, but I feel that, even under these circumstances, I 
would not be justified in prescribing for the employees 
of a street railroad, or other public carrier, a process to 
which I objected myself. It will be seen that in all my 
references to compulsory arbitration, I assume that the 
board or court of arbitration would be vested with the 
power necessary to enforce its award; that is, to punish 
its violation, by fine or imprisonment. And I can con- 
ceive of no such board or court proving effective unless 
it be vested with such powers. Then again, if the New 
Zealand law be followed, the referee or odd man in the 



INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION, 1 6/ 

board would likely be a member of the judiciary, and, 
as he could not always be expected to possess an inti- 
mate knowledge of the varied interests he would be 
called upon to decide, these interests would be in some 
danger of suffering injustice, such as would not be the 
case were the voluntary system in operation. 

Of State boards of arbitration, I will have little to 
say. We all know that, as at present constituted, they 
have proven far from satisfactory as a means of dealing 
effectively with labor disputes. Almost invariably, they 
savor more or less, in their complexion, of partisan 
politics, and do not possess the complete confidence of 
either one or the other factor in industry. As a result 
they are very rarely appealed to by the two parties in- 
terested in a dispute. They have no power either to 
compel reference of disputes to them or to enforce their 
award when reference has been made, and can only 
render service in those exceptional instances, in which 
the parties mutually agree to refer their differences to 
them for determination and express their willingness to 
accept the finding. 

With these brief references to compulsory arbitration 
and State boards I will close, but not before I reiterate 
my firm and unfaltering conviction that the peace of the 
industrial community and the broadening of our civiliza- 
tion are dependent upon the completest organization of 
the men and women engaged in the industries of our 
country, the organization of the employing interests on 
lines designed to mete out justice and not to disrupt or 
antagonize the organizations of labor, and the assent of 
both to the fullest and freest application of the prin- 
ciples of conciliation and arbitration in industrial dis- 
putes. 



CONFERENCES OF THE IRON MOULDERS' 
UNION AND THE NATIONAL FOUNDERS' 
ASSOCIATION. 

BY H. W. HOYT, EX-PRESIDENT OF THE NATIONAL 
FOUNDERS* ASSOCIATION. 

**TF voluntary arbitration will tend to solve industrial 

1 problems along the lines of least resistance, how 
can it best be attained in this country ? ** is one of the 
questions suggested in the call for this conference. 

The industrial problems, so-called, must be adjusted 
along the line of least resistance, and the line of least 
resistance, in my opinion, is voluntary arbitration. The 
highest conception of arbitration is that of an unbiassed 
conference board — a judicial body composed of arbitra- 
tors outside the sphere of influence exerted by the con- 
tending parties. 

Another idea, approaching more nearly the practical, 
is that of a board consisting of equal numbers from the 
two bodies, with an umpire chosen by both. 

Each of these conceptions of an arbitration board 
has failed to satisfy the parties in interest or to solve 
and settle industrial disputes. The best thinkers who 
are charged with the trying duties of practical arbi- 
tration have about decided that unless satisfactory 
settlements can be reached by an equal number of 
representatives of employer and employee, without an 

i68 



INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION, 1 69 

umpire, the conference would better fail. The future 
economist may be wise enough to present to a waiting 
world some plan of arbitrary arbitration acceptable to 
the wage-earner and wage-payer, but we fear that genius 
is not yet born. While waiting for his advent, arbitra- 
tion will go on. Every day we realize that public senti- 
ment is crystallizing around that thought. The dawning 
century will inherit from the past no more significant 
token of the evolution of peace and good will than this 
acknowledgment of the efficacy of conciliation. 

Arbitration invariably means compromise, and unless 
the contending parties are prepared to accept this abso- 
lute fact, the work must fail. Everything depends 
upon the personnel of the board. How important that 
the choice of arbitrators should fall upon the clearest 
and deepest thinkers, whose vision is not obscured by 
their prejudices. 

Questions of difference between buyer and seller are 
as old as mankind and yet the dominion of commerce 
illustrates how easily adjustments are made in that realm. 
The purely commercial aspect of barter and sale is com- 
plicated with the human element in questions relating 
to wages, and he who would settle the wage problem 
without taking humanitarianism into the account will 
not serve his fellow-men acceptably. The old law of 
supply and demand, strictly interpreted, does not avail 
to adjust all disputes that arise in the economic world. 
The competent arbitrator must acknowledge this. The 
employer who admits no other rule of action is unwise. 

There has been an infinite amount of trouble in con- 
ferences for conciliation and arbitration caused by insist- 
ence upon rules of conduct evolved in the lodge room 
and forming the written or unwritten laws of unionism. 



I/O INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION. 

To refer to these in detail would be to provoke unwar- 
ranted contention at this time. Equally provocative of 
trouble has been the tendency among some employers 
to ignore the wage-earners in the collective capacity. 
Sometime these two great forces will learn that the intel- 
ligent modification of their respective positions will 
extinguish the causes of what has too frequently been 
called an irrepressible conflict. It may require a great 
calamity in the industrial world of America to teach us 
anew some of the truths uttered by our forefathers and 
imperishably preserved in the Declaration of Indepen- 
dence. 

The hope of averting destructive war lies in the spirit 
that prompted this conference and in its educative 
forces. 

I beg permission to speak briefly of the practical side 
of arbitration and to point out what has been done in 
one of the greatest fields of industrial activity, in the 
hope that the successes and failures recorded may in- 
spire a lively faith in the achievement of those results 
which every sane man and woman will welcome. 

The National Founders' Association is one of the 
practical results of the evolution of modern social eco- 
nomics. The fundamental article of its constitution is 
the very embodiment of voluntary arbitration, and reads 
as follows: 

**The objects of this Association are: ist. — The adoption of a 
uniform basis for just and equitable dealings between the members 
and their employees, whereby the interests of both will be properly 
protected. 2d. — The investigation and adjustment, by the proper 
officers of the Association, of any question arising between members 
and their employees." 

This association was formed less than three years 



INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION. \J\ 

ago. It now numbers about four hundred members 
throughout the great manufacturing centres of the East, 
Middle West, and West. It employs an army exceeding 
thirty thousand men. 

One of its earliest acts was a joint conference with 
the representatives of the Iron Moulders' Union of North 
America for the purpose of considering an agreement 
that should form the working basis of a treaty of peace. 
This joint conference agreed upon a plan of arbitration 
which was subsequently adopted by the rank and file of 
both associations. It was an exceedingly simple and 
effective agreement, by the terms of which each body 
solemnly agreed that there should be neither strikes nor 
lockouts in the foundry industry until arbitration had 
failed to adjust the differences. The wise provisions of 
this agreement have been invoked scores of times, with 
such flattering results that neither party could be per- 
suaded to consent to its abrogation. 

The National Founders' Association is the largest 
organized body of employers in the United States com- 
mitted to the utilitarian object set forth in its constitu- 
tion. The Iron Moulders' Union, on the other hand, is 
one of the largest, best organized, and most intelligently 
governed labor unions in this republic. It is significant, 
therefore, to remember that during the eventful and 
intensely active industrial year of 1899 there was not a 
single disastrous strike or lockout in the foundry indus- 
try notwithstanding the conditions were such as to 
naturally provoke wage conflicts. 

These two great associations of employers and em- 
ployees have not been as successful in averting all con- 
tention in the year 1900, but the very failures have 
emphasized the necessity and the wisdom of a still closer 



172 INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION. 

adherence to the principles of arbitration and concilia- 
tion, and a more profound study and examination of 
economic conditions. 

Permanent results have already been definitely 
reached. It has been found possible for the repre- 
sentatives of the two organizations mentioned to meet 
and discuss the principles for which each is contending, 
without the slightest danger of personal animosity. 
Various conferences have been carried on, with a strong 
desire on both sides to reach a common ground by the 
exercise of mutual forbearance and concession. Failures 
to arrive at a harmonious decision, even in the face of 
impending industrial conflicts, have not destroyed faith 
in the success of the principle of arbitration. Each 
party has become more tolerant of the other. Friendly 
conferences, face to face with each other, have destroyed 
preconceived notions of each other's characteristics, 
broadened and deepened the spirit of toleration, and 
gradually paved the way for eventual peace in that great 
industry. 

An attempt has been made to nationalize the scheme 
of arbitration, — in other words, to take away from each 
individual case of difficulty its strictly local character, 
and place the adjustment of it in regularly appointed 
committees chosen by both associations, which commit- 
tees, by reason of their experience and broader horizon, 
are able to eliminate the local feature and arrive at re- 
sults in harmony with existing and accepted conditions 
elsewhere throughout the country. 

This course of action has gone far towards relieving 
the manufacturer from those petty annoyances which he 
has always associated with unionism, and at the same 
time has elevated and dignified the mission of the local 



INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION. I73 

and district officers of the Iron Moulders' Union of 
North America. 

The consequence has been that a more experienced, 
intelligent, and tolerant body of men have been called 
into action, and that the rank and file of union men are 
rapidly becoming educated to the new method of dealing 
with their affairs individually and collectively, while the 
manufacturers have been educated to a more liberal and 
just consideration of their employees' interests. 

The preamble of the constitution of the Iron Mould- 
ers' Union of North America begins with this declara- 
tion: 

* * Believing that under the present social system there is a general 
tendency to deny the producer the full reward of his industry and 
skill . . ." 

Upon this declaration of want of faith in human justice 
is builded practically all there is of unionism. The 
searcher after truth cannot deny that there has been 
much justification for this assumption. The National 
Founders' Association has expended a great deal of 
energy in endeavoring to bring about a set of conditions 
which would destroy the force of such a charge among 
its members. 

As an evidence of the spirit which actuates the de- 
liberations of the association, I desire briefly to quote 
from newspaper reports of the two last conventions of 
the National Founders' Association. Speaking of the 
Detroit convention held in February, 1900, the report 
says: 

*' If those who are pessimistic as to the outcome of the issues be- 
tween organized labor and employing capital could have heard the 
discussions at the Detroit meeting and caught the spirit that 



174 INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION. 

dominated the convention, they would have learned that the declar- 
ations of the constitution are not glittering platitudes. It was 
gratifying to find that intelligent, well equipped men in the ranks 
are strongly seconding the efforts of their leaders to make just and 
equitable dealing the rule between founders and moulders." 

Another unbiassed report of the same convention said: 

" No one could be present at the deliberations and hear the dis- 
cussions of the National Founders' Association without being forcibly 
impressed by the high principle actuating the members. Primarily 
driven by the aggressions of labor and the arbitrary attitude of labor 
leaders into forming an association for defensive purposes, that 
phase of the present situation was seldom brought out. 

*' Instead of hostility to the working man and his efforts to secure 
additional advantages, a humane interest was shown in his welfare 
and full recognition was accorded to his rights." 

In discussing the proceedings of the last convention, 
held in November, this year, a faithful newspaper report 
contains the following: 

** Division between capital and labor was deplored; the com- 
munity of interest subsisting between employer and employee was 
emphasized. Nowhere in the discussions was any countenance 
given to the doctrine of right by might, or any suggestion of peace 
on a basis that left out justice. If the sowers of discord between 
capital and labor, and those labor leaders who preach constantly the 
doctrine that the employee's interest is always in finding out what is 
to the interest of his employer and opposing it with all his might, 
could have heard the sentiments expressed by the leaders in debate, 
they might have imbibed a new idea concerning the attitude of the 
average manufacturer toward his employees." 

The association of which I have spoken is a type of its 
class. It is most gratifying to note the success achieved 
by the kindred organizations. The general public is 
scarcely prepared to accept the simplest recital of the 



INDUSTRIAL CONCILIA TIO.V. 175 

history that has been made in promoting the principles 
of arbitration. 

What of the future ? 

As long as the wage-earner believes, or is taught to 
assume that society is in league to rob him, as an in- 
dividual, of some of the purchasing power of his services, 
so long must society reckon with him in his collective 
capacity. The employer who elects to ignore this fact 
is often as much of a menace to the industrial peace as 
is that agitator who plays upon the prejudices and in- 
flames the passions of the men he falsely serves. But 
the conditions are improving on both sides. The pro- 
gressive manufacturer has learned that a union is not an 
altogether reprehensible evil in social economics, and 
readily admits that when organized wage-earners are 
dominated by strong conservative men they will meet 
the employer half-way in arbitration. 

Unions must remember that there never was an at- 
tempt made to unite manufacturing employers in the 
common cause of treating collectively with the relations 
of labor until the unions themselves had asserted their 
power. Both the employer and the employee must be 
honest enough to concede that their interests are mutual, 
and that the deep problems of economics cannot be 
solved in a decade. It is a slow evolution, that cannot 
be hastened by violence or intolerance. All the theories 
of all the wise scholastics on earth are of little avail. 
There is only one certain rule of action. It was long 
ago called the Golden Rule. 



CONCILIATION, NOT ARBITRATION. 

by chauncey h. castle, president of the stove 
founders' national defence association. 

AS a representative of the Stove Founders' National 
Defence Association, I have been requested to 
state my observations of, and the experiences of our as- 
sociation with what is known as " Industrial Arbitration." 

Regarding the importance of this subject, at this time, 
nothing need be said by me. A very large portion of 
the cost of a stove, range, or furnace is represented by 
the expenditure for labor of various classes in the con- 
struction of it, and the amount paid for moulding consti- 
tutes a material percentage of the entire labor cost. 

The Iron Moulders' Union is one of the oldest, strong- 
est, and most aggressive labor organizations in this 
country. 

Almost immediately after entering the business of 
stove manufacturing, during the year 1865, in a man- 
aging capacity, of a department connected with labor, 
I became involved in a contest followed by a strike, 
inaugurated by the Moulders' Union. 

At frequent intervals, during a long series of years 
following, there was a recurrence of moulders' strikes, or 
there was a lockout. In some cases the strikes were for 
an advance, while at other times they were against re- 
duction in the prices paid for moulding. In other 

176 



INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION, 1 77 

instances there were other issues, but at any time a 
strike was liable to be made upon slight provocation, 
and, as it seemed to me, without deliberate considera- 
tion. 

In almost every case in which I was in any manner 
responsible, or that came under my observation, the 
issue was ultimately adjusted, after a more or less pro- 
tracted period of idleness and of bitter contest, by means 
of conference between representatives of the parties in 
interest; and I was never able to comprehend why such 
conference might not better have occurred in advance of 
the issue being made, rather than after, thereby avoiding, 
if possible, unnecessary loss of money through waste of 
time. However, there seemed to be no disposition to 
try to discover a method. 

From time to time there were suggestions of resorting 
to arbitration in settling or avoiding strikes. Such came 
from employees and were not favorably entertained by 
employers. 

These labor disturbances, through strikes by moulders, 
grew from bad to worse, in our line of business, and 
from 1882 to 1886 were extremely grievous. 

Various groups of stove manufacturers met and con- 
sidered methods of meeting organization with organiza- 
tion. Some men of large experience who entertained 
extreme ideas, together with others of little experience, 
were disposed to make common cause against labor 
organizations in all cases wherein an issue should be 
made by such against any member of a contemplated 
organization. Others, who also possessed large experi- 
ence, insisted that a more conservative policy should be 
pursued, that thorough investigation of any issues should 
be made, and that a member should not be sustained 



178 INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION'. 

until it was proven, after affording all parties an oppor- 
tunity to be heard, that the demands were unjust and 
that just terms could not be had. This idea finally pre- 
vailed. 

It was also the conclusion that it would be to our 
advantage to profit by the many years* experience of the 
Moulders' Union by forming our organization, to an 
extent, along the lines at that time in use by that organi- 
zation. 

Accordingly the Stove Founders* National Defence 
Association was formed in 1886, embracing a large pro- 
portion of those who manufacture stoves most exten- 
sively. An executive committee was selected, and the 
man of largest experience upon both sides of labor 
questions connected with the business of manufacturing 
stoves, Mr. Henry Cribben, of Chicago, was elected 
President. We proceeded to formulate our articles and 
by-laws, having due appreciation of the skill and ability 
of the leaders of the opposition. 

A short time after our organization was formed we 
were obliged to contend with a serious condition. A 
demand was made upon one of our members by the 
Moulders' Union of St. Louis for a large increase in 
the rate of wages. The demand was promptly followed 
by a strike. 

Our committee proceeded to St. Louis to investigate. 
After thoroughly informing ourselves we offered a 
partial concession of the increase demanded, to go into 
immediate effect, together with an additional increase 
at a stated time, a few months later on. 

This offer was rejected, and we entered upon a contest 
which resulted in the complete triumph of our organiza- 
tion, although at large cost to us, and to our member 



INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION, 1 79 

who was involved, and at incomputable cost to the Iron 
Moulders* Union of North America. 

We engaged in other contests with the Iron Moulders' 
Union during the four or five years ensuing, each of 
which resulted about as did the first. 

The Stove Founders' National Defence Association 
had at all times manifested a willingness and desire to 
confer with employees or with organizations of em- 
ployees, upon any question of mutual interest, with a 
view to saving trouble and expense through satisfactory 
adjustment. 

The general officers of the Moulders' Union came to 
appreciate the possibilities of advantage in such a course, 
and early in 1891 an arrangement was made for a con- 
ference between five representatives of their organization 
and an equal number of ours. 

Such conference was held in Chicago, late in March, 
1 89 1, and during a session of three days a plan for the 
consideration and adjustment of grievances, which was 
called arbitration, but which may more properly be 
called conciliation, was unanimously agreed upon by the 
ten representatives, and was approved of and ratified by 
the respective organizations. 

The representatives of the moulders urged the strict 
arbitration plan, and as the word has a meaning of jus- 
tice and fairness, our representatives, in general, were 
disposed to favorably entertain it. However, some of 
our representatives contended strenuously that our mem- 
bers could not properly, and therefore would not, enter 
into an agreement that would obligate them in advance 
to submit important questions affecting their business 
to the decision of an odd and disinterested man, who 
had no knowledge of their business and its requirements, 



l8o INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION. 

and who might be biassed. The arguments upon this 
question of arbitration were earnest and extended. It 
was contended: 

First. That the odd man, who was disinterested, and 
who would probably have no knowledge of the business, 
would be alone responsible, for the reason that the 
representatives of neither party would be liable to con- 
cede, even if convinced, for those he represented would 
expect him to win through the odd man, if possible. 
The question was asked of one who was most strenuous 
for arbitration: ** Would you, if a member of an arbitra- 
tion committee, representing your side, concede anything 
of importance, even if you became convinced it was right 
to do so?*' And his reply was, **No; I should feel 
obliged to win, if possible, through the odd man." 

Second. That it would be extremely difficult to secure 
the services, in each case, of such a man as would be 
needed, and who would be acceptable to both parties, 
because few such men would be willing to serve, even 
when agreed upon, as the position would not be a desir- 
able one, to a really good and competent man. 

Third. Should an agreement to arbitrate be made, 
issues would multiply and some of the demands would 
be extreme, unjust, and even ridiculous. Such issues 
would be made, however, only because there would be a 
chance to gain through the odd man while there could 
not possibly be a loss. 

Fourth. The employer could not expect to stand an 
even chance with the employee, aside from the merits of 
the question, in an average of a number of arbitrations, 
because of the facts, that public sympathy is always with 
the workmen, that they have many votes, that they have 
large patronage to bestow upon every business and pro- 



INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION, l8l 

fession, and that they do not hesitate to exert to the 
utmost in such matters such influence as accompanies 
these conditions. So that, at any rate, if in doubt, the 
arbiter, being inexperienced and without knowledge of 
the business, would be likely to incline to favor the 
employee. 

For these reasons it was not reasonable to expect our 
members to be willing to accept such an arrangement. 
In other words they would not be willing to submit an 
important question, largely affecting their business in- 
terests, to the casting up of a chip, **wet or dry,*' with a 
large majority of the chances in favor of its falling wet 
side up, if their representatives selected dry. If the 
award was unjust to employees, they would not work 
under it, and if such as would operate to the ruin of the 
business of the employer, he could not long abide by it. 

It was urged that it were far better to submit any issue 
to a committee, composed of an equal number of the 
representatives of the moulders and of the manufactur- 
ers, as a last resort, each of whom had a knowledge of 
and an interest in the business, who should strenuously 
strive to reach an agreement, understanding that in case 
of their failure to do so an open rupture and bitter 
contest must be the result. 

Consideration was also given to avoiding, to the extent 
that might be possible, the inconvenience and expense 
of calling upon such a conference committee. 

It was agreed that employers and employees, who 
were directly affected, ought, in each case, locally, to 
make special efforts themselves to settle any disagree- 
ment, and that, failing to do so, either or both might 
send a statement of grievances to the officers of their 
general organizations, and that then the presidents 



1 82 INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION, 

should make investigation and try to adjust the dispute 
before the conference committee should be called. 

After a thorough discussion, extending over three 
days, as previously stated, the following resolutions were 
unanimously adopted by the ten representatives: 

*' I. Resolved, that this meeting adopt the principle of arbitration 
in the settlement of any dispute between the members of the I. M. 
U. of N. A. and the members of the S. F. N. D. A. 

** 2. That a conference committee be formed, consisting of six 
members, three of whom shall be stove moulders, appointed by the 
Iron Moulders* Union of North America, and three persons ap- 
pointed by the Stove Founders* National Defence Association, all 
to hold their offices from May ist to April 30th of each year. 

** 3. Whenever there is a dispute between a member of the S. F, 
N. D. A. and the moulders in his employ (when a majority of the 
latter are members of the I. M. U.) [this exception, or qualification, 
was afterwards eliminated], and it cannot be settled amicably be- 
tween them, it shall be referred to the presidents of the two associa- 
tions before named, who shall themselves or by delegates give it due 
consideration. If they cannot decide it satisfactorily to themselves, 
they may, by mutual agreement, summon the conference committee, 
to whom the dispute shall be referred, and whose decision by a 
majority vote shall be final and binding upon each party for the 
term of twelve months. 

*' Pending adjudication by the presidents and conference com- 
mittee, neither party to the dispute shall discontinue operations, 
but shall proceed with business in the ordinary manner. In case of 
a vacancy in the committee of conference, it shall be filled by the 
association originally nominating. No vote shall be taken except 
by a full committee or by an even number of each party." 

These resolutions were reported to, approved of, and 
ratified by both organizations, thus becoming agreements, 
and superior, as to any question between the two organi- 
zations or members of the same, to any article, by-law, 
or rule of either, that might be in conflict with them. 



INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION, 1 83 

You will observe that while we, in the first clause, 
adopt the principle of arbitration, we do not, strictly 
speaking, adopt the practice of it, but instead, we prac- 
tise conciliation through conference. Adjustments so 
reached are by far the most sure method of properly 
protecting important interests. Conferences constitute 
a much better and more economical method of correcting 
unjust conditions than do strikes and lockouts. What 
manner of man must he be who prefers going into an 
expensive lawsuit to settle a dispute regarding a business 
question, rather than confer with the opposite party 
upon the merits of it ? 

You will also observe that we undertake to avoid 
strikes and lockouts by agreeing that pending adjudica- 
tion by the presidents and the conference committee 
neither party to the dispute shall discontinue operations, 
but shall proceed with business in the ordinary manner. 
You will readily believe that there has been some trouble 
connected with carrying out this agreement, and this 
notwithstanding it is to the immediate advantage of all 
parties. There are many radicals among employers, as 
well as among employees, and such are liable to con- 
sider that their natural rights are being abridged if they 
are not at liberty to close their works, or to strike, as 
the case may be, whenever they have, or believe they 
have, a serious grievance. A shut-down or a strike for 
a day or two, where an issue has been made, has oc- 
curred upon some occasions, in violation of this agree- 
ment, ordinarily through failure of the parties to 
understand their obligations, but work, in each case, has 
been resumed when the matter has been brought to the 
attention of the party violating, or when their officers 
have remonstrated. This clause is a very important 



l84 INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION. 

one, aside from the saving of time and money accom- 
plished through it, as it enables all parties to proceed 
with adjustments in a cool and deliberate manner with- 
out excitement or anger. It is much more easy to adjust 
a difficulty before a rupture occurs than afterward. 

During nearly nine years of practical operations under 
this conference agreement it has not been necessary to 
assemble the conference committee, provided for in 
Clause 3, in more than one or two instances, although 
hundreds of issues have been made and grievances sent 
in. Almost without exception they have been satisfac- 
torily adjusted by the presidents themselves, or their rep- 
resentatives delegated for the purpose, and no strike by 
moulders or lockout by the manufacturer has prevailed 
in any factory of any member of our organization for 
more than one or two days, and even such have been rare. 

Since the adoption of the plan of conference in 1891, 
as stated, we have held a conference meeting of a some- 
what similar character almost every year at some time in 
the months of March or April. 

Various additional clauses have been adopted and 
ratified. Most of these are not of general interest, as 
they pertain to foundry rules and practice. Clauses 5 
and 6, adopted in 1892, however, relate to general rates 
of moulders* wages and a method of arriving at the same, 
and are as follows: 

'* 5. The general rate of moulders' wages shall be established for 
each year without change. 

** 6. When the members of the Defence Association shall desire a 
general reduction in the rate of wages, or the Iron Moulders' Union 
an advance, they shall each give the other notice, at least thirty 
days before the end of each year, which shall commence on the first 
day of April. If no such notice be given, the rate of wages current 
during the year shall be the rate in force for the succeeding year." 



INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION, 185 

Under this agreement as to moulding prices, we, in 
1894, because of general depression in business, and in 
rates for labor, would have been justified in demanding 
a considerable reduction in the rates for moulding, but, 
after consultation among ourselves, we concluded that 
inasmuch as the workmen would be only partially em- 
ployed a reduction would be a serious hardship, and 
that as the depression was probably to be but temporary 
we had better not insist upon it, although we had no 
doubt it would be readily conceded. 

We did, however, in conference, make an arrangement 
whereby it was agreed that in event of a reduction of 
rates for moulding being secured during the year by a 
stated considerable percentage of stove manufacturers in 
this country who were not members of our organization, 
the opportunity for reduction should then be open to us. 
We were not obliged to avail ourselves of this arrange- 
ment. We tided over the period of depression, although 
it was not temporary but protracted, to the vast advan- 
tage of the moulders, and possibly without detriment to 
ourselves. We have not at any time demanded a general 
reduction under the rules. 

So soon as prosperity began to bud, the moulders 
began to insist that notice be given by their officers in 
ample time, in order that they might be ready to partici- 
pate in the improved conditions from the ist of April 
following. A demand for an advance was made, a con- 
ference convened, and it was agreed that as we made no 
reduction when general reductions occurred, the time 
for us to advance had not arrived, and that the rates 
then prevailing should remain the rates for the year 
teminating April i, 1898. 

Early in 1898 the moulders again demanded an 



1 86 INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION. 

advance to take effect April ist, and a conference 
was called to consider it. After thorough discussion by 
the committee, an advance of ten per cent, in mould- 
ers' wages for the year to terminate April i, 1899, was 
conceded. 

In March, 1900, another conference was held, at 
which a further advance of five per cent, was made, to 
take effect on April ist last. 

Thus it would seem that, from the standpoint of the 
employee, our plan of conference has been demonstrated 
to be a remarkable success. By means of it, a long 
period of depression was passed without any reduction 
of their rates, and when a time of general prosperity 
arrived, they were enabled to promptly share in it with- 
out strife, and without loss of an hour's time. So that 
those moulders working in the foundries of the members 
of our association are direct gainers thereby to the 
extent of hundreds of thousands of dollars. 

The employer derived comfort and satisfaction from 
the stability and reliability secured, as well as from the 
peaceful and harmonious relations existing in this de- 
partment of his business. I have no doubt such condi- 
tions inure to his pecuniary advantage, when secured by 
so just and fair a method. 

While our association has no agreement for use of this 
plan with workmen in departments of our business other 
than moulding, we have practised it in some of them in 
a partial manner only, by common consent, with good 
results. Some strikes have occurred in such other de- 
partments that were more or less serious, each of which 
would have been entirely avoided had the method been 
applied in full, under an agreement. 

Our plan had been in successful operation for more 



INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION. 1 8/ 

than five years before I observed any important reference 
to it, or to a similar idea, from any source other than 
such as was directly or indirectly associated with the 
foundry business, or that had received it directly from 
our organization. However, in 1896, what seems to me 
to be a very thorough endorsement came from England. 
An Associated Press dispatch was printed in the news- 
papers, dated New York, November 28th, which con- 
tained the following: 

*' Samuel Woods, the English labor leader and ex-member of 
Parliament, Secretary of the Trades' Union Congress of Great 
Britain, arrived on the Campania this morning. Mr. Woods comes 
to the United States as a delegate from the Trades' Union Congress 
of Great Britain to the Convention of the American Federation of 
Labor at Cincinnati, December 14th. He is accompanied by John 
Mallinson, English labor leader and delegate to the Convention. 

" ' I do not believe in strikes," said Mr. Woods ; "I have little 
faith in arbitration either. I am a firm believer though, in a policy 
which I call conciliation. If interested parties, who know all about 
a dispute, cannot settle it, how can a third party, who knows noth- 
ing at all about it, help them to reach an agreement ? ' " 

As to how important an endorsement of our plan this 
is, I do not know, but surely it is thorough. I do not 
believe that any other method of adjustment of indus- 
trial questions or disagreements between employers and 
employees has been devised and practised that promises 
as nearly universal satisfaction and advantage to all 
concerned as does our agreed upon method of concilia- 
tion through conference, and I am sure that genuine 
arbitration, voluntary or compulsory, does not. 



CONFERENCES OF LONGSHOREMEN AND 
DOCK MANAGERS. 

BY DANIEL J. KEEFE, PRESIDENT OF THE INTERNA- 
TIONAL longshoremen's association. 

THE International Longshoremen's Association was 
organized in 1893 for the purpose of securing for 
the various local bodies uniform conditions as to the 
scale of wages as far as practicable, to eliminate abuses, 
to adjust the many or frequent differences that are 
prone to arise, and to elevate the standard of the mem- 
bers, morally and intellectually. At the outset we en- 
countered much opposition, due principally to the 
prejudice on the part of the employers, who refused 
to recognize or meet with committees of our members; 
feeling that we were irresponsible and no agreement or 
arrangement could be entered into that would bind us or 
compel the organization to respect its obligations. The 
low estimate in which the average dock worker was held 
was in a measure responsible for the lack of confidence 
on the part of the employers. This condition was largely 
due to the lack of uniform business methods, or, I might 
add, the absence of methods, as well as the lack of re- 
straint or prohibition of excessive or exorbitant demands 
when the employers were found to be at the mercy of the 
local workers. 
, The fact that the labor of a dock worker requires great 

188 



INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION, 1 89 

physical strength and endurance does not necessarily 
imply that the dock worker must be low in the scale of 
intelligence; while the calling does not require a high 
grade of intelligence, yet the high wages incident to 
organization has raised the standard of the dock worker, 
so that its ranks to-day number many mechanics whose 
trade does not offer the compensation of the dock worker, 
as well as many mechanics whose trade, owing to the 
introduction of labor-saving machinery, has relegated 
them to common labor. Again, it is a well-known and 
recognized economic truth that the higher the wage paid 
to any trade or calling, the higher in proportion is the 
intelligence of the worker. 

To-day, to demonstrate how our organization is re- 
garded by employers, who looked upon us formerly as 
irresponsible workmen, we can point with pride to a 
host who are the warmest friends of our organization, 
and who respect any agreement we make, with the feel- 
ing that no unfair or undue advantage will be taken by 
the dock worker who is a member of our organization. 

The longshoremen's or dock workers' organization is 
one of the few institutions that meets with its employ- 
ers in joint conferences or conventions, to settle questions 
of wages and other conditions, decisions to remain in 
full force and effect for a certain period. And we can 
say without fear of contradiction that we have had but 
very little dissatisfaction found on the part of the employ- 
ers on account of our failure to carry out such agreements. 

In our different arrangements that cover the various 
kinds of dock work, we always have a clause inserted, 
that, " In the event of any dispute arising between our 
men and their employers, the men will continue to work 
without any strike or lockout, until such time as the 



190 INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION. 

differences are adjusted by arbitration, as provided for 
in said agreement/' There is no question about the 
arbitration being a success, as the arbitrators are selected 
as follows: ** The employees to select one, the employers 
to select one, and they two to select the third arbitrator, 
but in the event of their not being able to agree on the 
third arbitrator, then each side shall select a disinterested 
arbitrator, and those two shall select the third arbitrator. 
The finding of the majority to be final." 

The longshoremen's organization has insisted on all 
its agreements being carried out in both letter and spirit. 
To illustrate the fairness with which the longshoremen 
deal with their employers, — we have in the port of 
Buffalo a local union, which violated its agreement with 
the employers during the month of July, while a con- 
vention of the longshoremen was being held in Duluth, 
Minn. The matter was brought to the attention of the 
convention, and it immediately notified our local repre- 
sentative to furnish men at our expense to take the places 
of our men who had violated the agreement, and they 
were not members of our organization. 

We had another instance of violation of the arbitration 
clause by one of our locals at the port of Cleveland. 
The organization instructed the men to return to work 
and submit their grievance to arbitration, which they 
did. The arbitration board rendered a finding in favor 
of the men. Those perhaps are the only two violations 
of any consequence that have occurred out of our many 
agreements during the year of 1900. 

We contend that proper conditions can be secured 
only through the employers meeting with their em- 
ployees in joint conferences and conventions and dis- 
cussing the questions of wages and other conditions 



INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION. I9I 

pertaining to their mutual interests fairly and freely, 
and, after due and careful consideration, entering into an 
agreement, such agreement guarding against any strike or 
lockout, and providing for adjustment by some method 
of arbitration. During these discussions the employers 
and the employees can become acquainted with each 
other, and understand that their interests are mutual, 
and that they are not watching to take any advantage 
that may offer of each other, but, on the contrary, are 
ready to co-operate with each other and bring about 
the very best possible results for all parties concerned. 
When the employer can understand that his employee 
is not waiting the opportune moment to take undue ad- 
vantage of him, by compelling him to comply with un- 
reasonable and exorbitant demands, and the employee, 
on the other hand, can understand that the employer is 
not trying to reduce his condition to slavery, by paying 
only starvation wages, and taking any other advantage 
that might offer to reduce his condition, — when this 
thing can be understood, it will be because the employer 
meets with his employees and gives them an opportunity 
to present their demands. The employer, on the other 
hand, will have the same opportunity to show his em- 
ployees that the conditions will not permit of his comply- 
ing with their demand. There is no question in my 
mind but that this policy would be the means of prevent- 
ing a great amount of friction in the future. 



ORGANIZATION OF EMPLOYERS. 

BY FREDERICK P. BAGLEY. 

I SHALL address you upon the necessity for organiza- 
tion among employers. To meet a question which 
may have arisen as to the pertinency of my subject to the 
conference called for the specific purpose of considering 
arbitration, permit me to state that later I shall attempt 
to show a definite relation between the two, and further, 
that an important if not imperative reason exists for the 
introduction of the present inquiry at this point of our 
nation's industrial development. 

In this paper it is assumed that the conference is 
agreed on the following premises: 

First. That no longer are we mainly an agricultural 
country. We have developed into a producing and 
manufacturing nation, in which are towns, cities, and 
districts solely dependent upon the continued success of 
the mines and industries located therein. 

Second. That by means of rapid and cheap transporta- 
tion manufacturers are no longer able to control the trade 
of the district in which they are located. They must 
meet competition from adjacent or distant States and in 
some instances from foreign countries. An illustration 
of the possibilities of cheap transportation was furnished 
the other day by a man who stated that in ascertaining 
the cost of transporting a certain raw product from 

192 



INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION, I93 

Arizona to London he found that the rate was less than 
from Arizona to Chicago — low 'enough to admit of his 
selling his product in the London market in competition 
with that produced in Europe. 

Third. That in many lines of industry the production 
is greater than our consumption. If the plants are to 
be kept in profitable and regular operation the supplies 
must be disposed of in the markets of the world in 
competition with similar goods manufactured in other 
countries. 

Fourth. That the cost and conditions of manufactur- 
ing must be such as to admit of the finished product 
being sold in competition. In the great engineers' strike 
in England the employers by organization freed them- 
selves from labor restrictions that had prevented them 
from producing their goods at a price that would allow 
them to compete in their own and the world's markets. 
Those restrictions and the subsequent strike checked 
English trade and helped American and Continental 
manufacturers to secure customers and permanent trade 
connections. 

Fifth. That a disturbance of any nature or a radical 
change in the cost or conditions of production is to be 
avoided as being liable to injure employer and employee. 
Some time ago a Chicago union made demands on a 
manufacturers' association as to wages and shop condi- 
tions which if granted would have made competition 
with firms located outside of Chicago impossible. The 
union was willing to make Chicago a closed market as to 
outside manufacturers, but as the local market could not 
absorb the capacity of the plants located here and the 
union would not withdraw its demands, a strike ensued 
that lasted for nearly a year. It was finally won by the 

»3 



194 INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION. 

manufacturing association at a heavy cost of time and 
money. The men lost largely in wages and the union 
was broken up. 

Sixth. That to-day as a rule all large enterprises are 
conducted upon a scientific basis with the principle of a 
small percentage upon a large turnover. The business 
policy suited to the past generation is an antiquated con- 
trivance wholly inadequate to the situation to-day. 
Manufacturers years ago made a good living while using 
a plain slide-valve engine. It consumed a large amount 
of coal and generated a comparatively small amount of 
power. It was the best there was, however, and the 
high percentage of profits covered the loss caused by 
waste. But no one can afford to use that old machine 
to-day. In its place stands the quadruple-expansion 
engine in which every item of waste and energy is ac- 
counted for, where each part performs its function in 
harmony with the whole; giving the greatest result with 
the least expenditure. This high productivity carries 
with it delicacy of organization and adjustment. Hot 
bearings and friction once ignored must now be remedied 
immediately if a heavy loss is to be avoided. With these 
exacting requirements on the one hand, the manufac- 
turers are on the other hand face to face with a group of 
facts : 

First. That labor, which they must have and the price 
of which enters so largely into the cost of their product, 
is organized and through its organization seeks to: 

A. Substitute collective for individual bargaining; 

B. Set the rate of wages; 

C. Fix the conditions of employment as to hours, pro- 
duction, etc. ; 

D. Say who of the community may or may not work. 



INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION, I95 

All of which are most radical departures from previous 
conditions. They merge the individual into the mass 
and change loyalty to the employer into loyalty to the 
organization. 

Second. That from this organization of labor have 
sprung an entirely new set of conditions affecting labor, 
capital, and the State — conditions that are pregnant with 
danger to all three. 

How to meet these new conditions in order that what 
is good in them for capital, labor, and the State may be 
brought out, and what is wrong to any one of the three 
crushed, is the problem that the employers must of neces- 
sity solve for their business safety. The moral re- 
sponsibility to do so is also theirs, for upon the proper 
adjustment of the relationship of these three interests 
depends the future peace and prosperity of this country. 

Before attempting to work out a solution, the employer 
must ascertain to what extent the organization of labor 
has gone, and the power that lies in organizations. He 
then must decide whether he can cope with the problem 
alone, or must depend upon organization to modify 
organization. 

For the investigation, and as the basis of subsequent 
actions, the scientific method should be used, no matter 
where the deductions may lead. All prejudice for or 
against capital or labor, all sentimentalism, idealism, and 
half thinking must be laid aside. The cold, hard facts 
of the natural development of the competitive system are 
here with us to-day. Society needs, as never before, 
cool, clear thinking, to enable it to meet the conditions 
that have arisen in the last decade and the new ones that 
are crowding forward every day. It should be recog- 
nized that organized labor like organized capital is 



196 INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION 

disposed of and controlled by men — not gods or demi- 
gods — with the same passions, temptations, virtues, 
weaknesses, and ambitions. 

In its organized form, capital may be divided into 
three classes: 

A. Corporations; 

B. Combinations — or groups of corporations; 

C. Combinations of combinations — or the consolida- 
tion of groups of organizations. 

The higher forms of labor exactly correspond; 

A. For corporations you have unions; 

B. For combinations you have the national organ- 
izations of the different trades controlling the trade 
throughout the United States; 

C. For combinations of combinations you have the 
American Federation of Labor, which covers practically 
the entire organized labor field of the United States. 

It will be seen that labor is as highly organized as 
capital, and, to those who are following developments in 
the industrial world, it is apparent that labor seeks to 
extend its power in unorganized industries and districts, 
the same as capital is doing. 

Speaking generally, in one respect organized labor is 
behind organized capital, that is, in unity of action and 
subordination to a head. This is being rapidly remedied. 
Discipline and unison of action are being perfected, 
and the authority of the leaders is more recognized and 
obeyed. If their ideal in this direction is attained, the 
discipline of an army will be observed by organized 
labor. 

Whether capital has taken upon itself the forms as- 
sumed by labor or labor has followed the examples set by 
capital, is immaterial. The facts are, that in most in- 



INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION. 1 97 

dustries of this country labor is organized into unions; 
that these unions are centralized into national organiza- 
tions to which they are subordinate; that these unions 
are further centralized and the power more concentrated 
by being either directly, or through their national 
organizations, members of the American Federation of 
Labor, a body co-extensive with the United States. 
The possibilities for good and evil are at once 
apparent. 

In the past, on the side of the employers, leaving out 
the stove manufacturers and one or two other trades, 
what had the employers to show in the way of organiza- 
tion to adjust labor questions ? Nothing that could be 
mentioned without a blush. Small, local, decentralized, 
weak-kneed affairs, where nearly every individual felt his 
importance, was jealous or suspicious of his neighbor, 
was tricky or disloyal to his leaders, the ape and the 
tiger forever showing in their character, easy to divide, 
consequently easy victims. How to explain the amazing 
indifference and apathy of the average employer to the 
changes affecting his business future that have been 
going on about him in the labor world is simply impos- 
sible except upon the ground that, like the hog, he has 
been so busy getting the dollars that were in the trough 
in front of his nose that he has been oblivious to all 
else. The relations of the unorganized individual em- 
ployer to organized labor is as the relation of the indi- 
vidual manufacturer to a trust. 

To measure the latent powers and possibilities of an 
organization, a ground should be selected where that 
organization has had a free and untrammelled growth — 
where it has blossomed and borne its fruit in the fulness 
of its vigor and maturity. The organization selected 



198 INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION. 

is taken solely because it illustrates perfectly what such 
an organization can accomplish, and is a part of the 
writer's personal experience. The results are to be 
considered as bearing on cost of production. 

For a number of years the Building Trades Council of 
Chicago was the most perfectly organized combination 
of labor that this country has ever known. It had 
actually reached the goal of unionism, which is to con- 
trol the labor used in a given industry. Not a man of 
the thirty-five to fifty thousand employed in the building 
industry of Chicago could work without first procuring 
and paying for a license from this organization. It had 
never been successfully opposed, therefore it affords the 
best possible example of an unmodified centralized or- 
ganization carried to its logical end. An analysis of 
the results should show whether the laws governing the 
development of power through organization hold true 
here as elsewhere. 

The fact that it was a centralized body to which be- 
longed a large number of different trades adds interest, 
since if but one trade were being examined the results 
might be thought to be peculiar to that trade. But here 
were many trades, composed of all nationalities, working 
in one industry, under the same conditions and in the 
same central organization. 

Upon what plans the council was built, how the power 
to call strikes without referring the matter to either the 
unions or the council was centred in an anomalous body, 
the Board of Business Agents, with its own officers and 
rules (Article IX., Sees, i, 2, 3, Art. XIII., Sees, i, 2); 
what effect the latter had on the unions and on the 
business agents themselves, are not pertinent to this 
subject. When the history of this council shall be writ- 



INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION. 1 99 

ten it will furnish food for thought to the union workman, 
the employer, and — as is devoutly hoped by both — to 
the ignorant sentimentalists, male and female. The 
question is, what were these groups of men able to ac- 
complish by being organized ? 

ist. In certain trades the amount of work a man was 
allowed to perform in eight hours was fixed (lathers, 
plumbers, steam-fitters, tile- and mantle-setters). 

2d. In one organization, the business agent fixed the 
number of men that should be employed on a job 
(plasterers). 

3d. Certain of the unions (plumbers and tile-setters) 
prohibited the use of apprentices. Another (lathers) 
prohibited them for five years. 

4th. The use of machinery in another trade (stone- 
cutters) was prohibited, and where an employer was 
found using it he was arbitrarily fined and his factory 
closed until he paid the money into the union. 

5th. Agreements with employers' associations were 
broken (plumbers, stone-cutters, laborers, and hod-car- 
riers). 

6th. Restrictions were placed on raw and finished 
material, whether made by union or non-union labor 
(stone-cutters, ornamental iron workers). 

7th. The workmen in one trade could not under any 
circumstances perform any work in another. As an ex- 
ample, an ordinary laborer could not touch a plasterer's 
scaffold, as it was the work of a plasterer's laborer. 

8th. The indiscriminate use of the sympathetic strike 
upon the slightest excuse. 

Every one of these results affects cost of production. 
Most of them would make it impossible for a manufac- 
turer to produce his goods at a price that would admit 



200 INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION. 

of his selling in competition with manufacturers not 
under the same restrictions. 

The main causes that permitted and encouraged these 
changes from legitimate to illegitimate trade-unionism 
were: 

I St. These unions were a highly organized and cen- 
tralized body in contact with an unorganized, decentral- 
ized mass, for such the employers were. With the 
sympathetic strike and the boycott in the hands of the 
council it was an impossibility for any firm or trade to 
resist the imposed conditions. 

2d. Politics, and all that term implies to our American 
democracy in large cities. By it the administration, 
police, and lower courts were nearly paralyzed and the 
individual employer was blocked at every turn in his 
efforts to obtain justice. He controlled but one vote. 
The council was supposed to control thousands. He 
was a unit, it was an organization. He did not 
count. 

Here you have the individual employer unable to resist 
uneconomic conditions that are put upon him by those 
who do not share his responsibilities, and at the same 
time impotent to secure justice. 

It is granted that this is not legitimate unionism, and 
that possibly the heads of the unions were not wise and 
good leaders, but on the other hand it must also be ad- 
mitted that the results were only possible by organization, 
that the same possibilities are latent in every centralized 
organization whether of labor or capital, and that the 
unions, from the very nature of things, cannot guarantee 
to retain their present able and conservative leaders, or 
to replace them by equally strong and upright ones. If 
any organization is unopposed it becomes corrupt, and 



INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION, 20I 

the worst elements in it are able to rise to the surface 
and assume control for personal ends. 

Not until the employers became organized and cen- 
tralized was it possible to change these conditions. This 
is not the time to relate the process by which the employ- 
ers finally succeeded in their twofold aim, namely, that 
of changing those conditions, and at the same time 
preserving the integrity of the unions. 

Two details, however, are material: one, that all the 
agreements between employers* organizations and the 
unions shall contain an arbitration clause. The other is 
the effort made by the employers' organization towards 
arbitration. This is of vital importance to the unorgan- 
ized employer. At the outset, with the hope of obtain- 
ing the changes by peaceable methods, the employers 
made two attempts at arbitration with the Building 
Trades Council. The first did not get beyond the 
opening meeting, owing to the fact that the councils* 
committee never returned or paid any further attention 
to the requests of the employers' committee. The 
second, made several months later, was more successful 
in that an agreement was reached and signed by the two 
committees. It was ratified by the employers the next 
day. No action was taken on it by the council, nor 
was any reply ever made to communications sent to the 
council by the employers notifying it of the employers' 
ratification and asking for an answer as to the intention 
of the council with regard to the agreement. Arbitra- 
tion is not a practical measure unless a degree of equality 
exists between the divergent parties. There are rela- 
tionships so far removed from each other by the might 
of the one and the weakness of the other that an ap- 
peal for mercy is proper and a request for arbitration 



202 INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION. 

presumptuous. It was as though a Chinese subject under 
sentence had asked the Emperor to arbitrate the ques- 
tion. Supposing the last effort at arbitration had been 
between the council and an individual, what could he 
have done ? In other words — and they are the cause of 
this paper being presented in this arbitration conference 
— on both sides to an arbitration you must have organi- 
zations to carry out the decisions or agreement; organiza- 
tions that will not only see that the other party lives up 
to its agreements but also that its own members do 
likewise. The organizations should stand for peace and 
should co-operate to the end that justice shall be the 
portion of all. 

The evils and the good that have sprung from organi- 
zation of capital and organization of labor are not 
because the organizations were composed of either em- 
ployers or workmen as such. If it were possible to have 
the employers and the workmen exchange places in the 
membership of their organizations the results from each 
organization, as far as the abilities of the leaders fitted 
the new conditions, would be the same as they were 
before. It is that groups of men by organization and 
concentration of power are enabled to accomplish results 
beyond the capacity of any one of the individuals com- 
posing the organization. The assembling together of a 
number of human units with a oneness of purpose and 
action, disciplined and controlled by a central authority, 
generates a force that the unorganized cannot resist or 
guide. Should this force be used to its fullest extent 
by the leaders for either personal ends or for the benefit 
of the organization as against the remainder of the com- 
munity disaster will follow. Labor says that organized, 
centralized capital controls the legislatures, makes and 



INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION, 203 

unmakes laws, in other words, that it is a supreme power 
in the land. Capital says that organized, centralized 
labor overrides the rights of individuals, forces special 
privileges from weak-kneed administrations, and violates 
the laws protecting life, property, and freedom of action. 
If the organization of society as expressed in the laws 
cannot protect the rights of every individual in the State, 
then those that are deprived of their lawful rights by any 
organization must themselves organize and seek to pre- 
serve those rights. In no other way can self-protection 
be secured. The rapacity and cupidity of employers 
have forced labor to organize to protect the individual. 
The extreme action of organized labor has made neces- 
sary organizations of employers like the National Stove 
Manufacturers* Defence Association in order that the 
rights of the individual manufacturer may be preserved. 
In this particular trade the organization of the men and 
the organization of the employers modify each other, 
and prevent extremes on either side. There is a mutual 
regard for each other's rights, born of a respect for the 
power that each knows lies latent in the other's organi- 
zation. Each requires the other to maintain an equili- 
brium. No one class can be trusted to represent the 
interests and lawful right of another. Even were one 
class altruistic it could not represent another, because it 
could not comprehend its wants, desires, and aspirations. 
In industrial adjustments the necessity for organiza- 
tions of employers is already felt by labor leaders as well 
as by advanced employers themselves. The next great 
change in the evolution in the relationship of labor to 
capital will be the organization of employers, not for 
aggression, but to modify and co-operate with organiza- 
tions of labor. 



THE ORGANIZATION OF THE EMPLOYER 
CLASS AS A PREREQUISITE OF CON- 
CILIATION AND ARBITRATION. 

BY HERMAN JUSTI, COMMISSIONER OF THE ILLINOIS COAL 
OPERATORS* ASSOCIATION. 

WE could agree, I believe, upon the general propo- 
sition that there is no waste so destructive of 
available wealth as the waste of enforced idleness, and 
that strikes may be ended, and are generally ended, 
without settling the questions involved. In a majority 
of cases they are only ended by exhaustion. We could 
even broaden this proposition and unanimously agree 
that by the side of the labor problem all other worldly 
problems are secondary, since the very foundations of 
prosperity rest upon the relations existing between the 
employer and the employee classes, idle labor meaning 
idle capital, and vice versa. Here it seems everything in 
the industrial world begins and ends. Agreement so far 
is easy, but beyond this point opinion will vary as to the 
cause of strikes, as to the necessity for them, and as to 
the best means of rendering them obsolete. 

To me it seems that all efforts to permanently prevent 
strikes are almost certain to fail, unless labor and capital 
are both thoroughly organized, the strength of the re- 
spective organizations being so nearly equal that neither 
side can presume upon the weakness or unpreparedness 

204 



INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION. 20$ 

of the other. The peace of nations, as we well know, 
is preserved by the fear which each nation has of waking 
a sleeping lion. The great powers of the world have 
approximately accurate information of each other's re- 
sources, strength, and preparedness, and hence, wars in 
our day usually occur only between a giant on the one 
hand and an infant or decrepit nation on the other. 
Differences between equally strong nations are left for 
settlement to diplomacy. The same is in a certain sense 
true of conflicts in the industrial world. Labor, while 
not perfectly organized and not so rich in resources as 
capital, and therefore unequal in a protracted industrial 
war, is so much better organized than capital that in 
short, decisive conflicts, in continuous skirmishings, it 
usually comes out the victor. This statement, I well 
know, has been discredited in some quarters by labor 
leaders, but it can be proven. In fact, it is no exaggera- 
tion of the truth to say that the difference in favor of the 
organization of labor, as compared with the organization 
of capital for the purposes I have indicated, is as great 
as the difference in the discipline and power of the 
regular army and of a hastily improvised home guard. 

Combinations, trusts, and corporations are spoken of 
as organized capital. This is misleading. All these are 
consolidated or aggregated capital, consolidated or com- 
bined to reduce the expense of doing business, to other- 
wise cheapen production, or to control or regulate the 
markets of the world, but they are not organized in the 
same sense, or for the same purpose, for which labor 
is organized. Our great need is two well organized 
forces, both established for the same purpose, viz., to 
determine and regulate the wages and the conditions of 
labor. To so organize, employers must profit by the 



206 INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION. 

examples set them in self-sacrifice and self-denial by 
their employees. It is a noteworthy fact that the thirty 
or forty thousand coal miners in Illinois contribute annu- 
ally in cash three hundred and sixty thousand dollars 
for the support of their union, and what they thus con- 
tribute is small as compared with what they sacrifice by 
strikes. 

Until the employer class organizes and establishes col- 
lectively a department of labor, just as individually or 
in corporate capacity employers provide for their execu- 
tive and their construction departments, their financial 
and their sales departments, strikes will continue ; and 
if strikes, therefore, are to become obsolete in America 
every department of industry must be thus organized. 
It was with this end in view that the Illinois Coal Opera- 
tors' Association was organized, with myself as Commis- 
sioner. 

This experiment has attracted attention and elicited 
favorable comment in this country and in Europe, and 
the Illinois coal operators' plan is therefore fairly well 
understood. 

The attention of the Conference is respectfully called 
to Section 2 of Article I. of the Constitution of the Mine 
Workers' Union of America: 

*' The objects of this Union are to unite all mine employees in or 
around the mine and to ameliorate their conditions by methods of 
conciliation, arbitration, or strikes." 

This declaration by an organization of laborers with a 
membership of about two hundred and thirty-five thou- 
sand affords an excellent text for practically all that need 
be said on the subject under discussion. 

It will be observed that the order in which such dif- 



INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION-, 20/ 

ferences or disputes shall be adjusted is by first trying 
conciliation, but that plan failing there shall be a resort 
to arbitration, and should that fail, then, and not till 
then, is the strike to follow as a last resort. 

It is needless to attempt to fix the degree of respon- 
sibility upon either the employer or the employee classes 
for failing to proceed with the adjustment of differences 
between them in the order just given. Every intelligent 
man well knows, be he of the one or the other class, that 
nearly every disorder in the industrial world affecting 
what is commonly called capital and labor is due to the 
reversal of practically all in Section 2 of Article I. of 
the document which I have just read. Differences and 
disputes are sought to be adjusted, not in the manner 
indicated, but by first striking, then by trying some 
doubtful plan of arbitration, and finally reaching a settle- 
ment by means of conciliation. 

Conciliation is the logical and the only way of settling 
nearly all differences or disputes arising between em- 
ployer and employee. The hope to be fondly cherished 
is that thoughtful men in America will solve the great 
problem of labor and render strikes a thing of the 
past, by religiously observing, not the practice, but the 
plan outlined by the mine workers of trying conciliation 
as long as there is a ray of hope of adjusting differences 
by that plan, but, failing to so adjust them, then trying 
arbitration. Let it, however, be clearly understood that 
the plan of arbitration agreed to is not to be such a plan 
as merely compromises interests, but such as makes an 
equitable adjustment to be accepted as a precedent 
which all interests involved can ever after safely follow. 

To me it seems that, mainly, conciliation, and, in ex- 
treme or unusual cases, arbitration, are all that should be 



208 INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION. 

necessary to insure tranquillity in the industrial world, 
at least so far as the question o. labor enters into the in- 
dustrial problem. In order to terminate a strike the 
remedies are finally adopted wLxh were originally pro- 
posed, or that naturally suggested themselves to fair men, 
before the strike was inaugurated. Why then not adopt 
such remedies or methods at once ? Settlement by con- 
ciliation, then, being the common-sense application of the 
Golden Rule to differences or disputes arising between 
employer and employee, and the settlement of differences 
and disputes being founded upon what each side finally 
concedes to be right, the coal operators and the coal min- 
ers of Illinois, through the representatives of organized 
bodies of each, have agreed to give that plan a fair trial. 
The wonder is that in view of the great destruction of 
life and property in this State during the past decade, 
some such common-sense plan was not tried long ago. 

It may be interesting to know that in few, if any, of 
these cases the question of wages was involved. The 
disputes arose from a difference of opinion as to the 
exact meaning of certain parts of the joint agreement, 
or from causes in no way connected with the agreement. 

The prescribed limits of this paper render it impossible 
to give an exact account of what are the most fruitful 
causes of disputes arising between employers and em- 
ployees, but I believe I can safely say that a very large 
percentage of them could have been avoided by the 
exercise of tact and kindness upon the part of the em- 
ployer class, or by patience and a due regard for the 
interests of the employer upon the part of the employees. 

Gratifying as has been the success of this experiment, it 
stands to reason that, with increasing experience of those 
entrusted with the investigation and adjustment of these 



INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION, 209 

disputes, there will be a steady improvement in the sys- 
tem itself, made possible by an increasing knowledge of 
the conditions existing in and about the mines and of the 
rights of both the employer and the employee, to the end 
that average harmony shall prevail. 

If the Illinois plan is generally adopted and a great 
central body is established, we shall then have: 

1. An American Federation of Industries resembling 
in experience, influence, and power the American Fed- 
eration of Labor. 

2. A National Board of Arbitration composed of men 
specially and directly chosen by all the interests involved 
because of their training, education, occupation, and 
tastes, and indebted for their appointment to no office- 
holder nor to any political party. 

It is not intended that under this plan all the members 
of the board of arbitration shall sit in every case, but it 
would be possible to have different sets of arbitrators 
take up, at practically the same time and at different 
places, different cases submitted to the board. 

In carrying out the idea of having the board of arbitra- 
tion as far removed as possible from the direct interests 
involved in the question to be considered, there should, 
however, be one representative from the employer's and 
one from the employee's side which are directly interested 
on every commission or board designated to hear the 
cases submitted. 

Let us say, for example, that it is agreed there shall 
be three arbitrators selected from each side. Should 
these six not be able to agree, then a seventh man shall 
be selected. To select an arbitrator to give a final de- 
cision is usually a great stumbling-block. This difficulty, 
however, can be overcome in this way : that the seventh 



2IO INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION. 

man shall be a member of the general board of arbitra- 
tion and he may be any one of the general board, to be 
selected by lot if he cannot be selected by agreement, 
but he must not be interested in the particular interests 
involved. There may be cases to decide which would 
embarrass the direct representatives of labor, if not 
also the representatives of capital. The human ele- 
ment in all of us (which makes self-preservation the first 
law of nature) affects pacificators and mediators at times 
just as it does other men. The officials of labor organi- 
zations, as well as the representatives of capital, will find 
it hard always to render such a decision as is to be ex- 
pected from a body entirely free from all entanglements 
and not subject to the orders, caprice, or venom of local 
unions or direct business interests. We well know there 
are some men both in the ranks of capital and labor who 
cannot see any one's rights but their own. Their ever- 
lasting enmity would be incurred by an adverse decision 
of their own immediate representatives. Arbitrators 
should therefore be protected against temptation in 
every form. 

One of the questions, for example, which a non- 
political board of arbitration, such as I have suggested, 
could perhaps settle better than it could be settled in 
any other way, or before any other board of arbitration, 
is, let us say, the question as to whether the man man- 
ipulating typesetting machines, or the proof-reader, 
should be members of the Typographical Union, or 
whether they should continue in separate and distinct 
organizations, or whether proof-readers should be mem- 
bers of any organization at all, since the position held by 
publishers is that they should be company men strictly. 

What we need then is a wise and sincere utterance on 



INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION. 211 

all those vexed questions which have been productive of 
the greatest friction between capital and labor, and not 
until such an expression, at all times available, has been 
given, will public opinion be healthy nor will public 
sympathy go where it rightly belongs. 

Thus a great educational system would spring up to 
educate, not the masses, of the people alone, but their 
teachers, the pulpit and the press. 

Such a body. of men would be almost certain to act 
fairly, because naturally it would care more for the rights 
of society than for the interests of a few, for where men 
are not personally or directly interested in an issue they 
are always ready to stand for that which is for the wel- 
fare of society. 

All the varied plans so far proposed for adjusting 
serious labor troubles by arbitration are encumbered by 
the necessity of legislative enactments. Compulsory 
arbitration is not a question of practical reform and 
therefore is foredoomed. State boards of arbitration 
have an inherent fault, which has weakened and must 
ever weaken their influence, making their useful offices 
unavailable often for both capital and labor. Voluntary 
arbitration provided for under such a system as I have 
described seems fairer and simpler and acts quicker. 
Besides, the aid of the government, either State or 
National, should never be invoked save in an extremity, 
all differences and disputes between individuals or 
classes being left for adjustment as nearly as possible at 
their source — for differences between employers and em- 
ployees are in many respects to be regarded as merely 
family differences, and should be and can be better 
settled within the immediate industrial family than 
before a political board of arbitration. 



212 INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION, 

We are nearing the close of a century. If this Con- 
ference should offer something wise, practical, beneficent, 
to the American people — something that will make for 
peace and honor — the last days of that century will be 
its best. This Conference, therefore, should not adjourn 
without offering to the public some simple, practical 
plan of conciliation and arbitration, accompanying it 
with an appeal to those great teachers, the pulpit and 
the press, to inaugurate the new century with a spon- 
taneous effort to make the peaceful solution of the labor 
problem in our free land the subject of their best thought 
and the object nearest their hearts, underlying as it does 
the very foundations, not only of our government, but of 
society. 



ARBITRATION AND POLITICAL ACTION. 

BY FRANK BUCHANAN, PRESIDENT OF THE BRIDGE AND 
STRUCTURAL IRON WORKERS* UNION OF CHICAGO. 

OF course, I do not believe that all this strife be- 
tween labor and capital can be settled by arbitra- 
tion, first, because human nature on both sides is full of 
imperfections, and second, there is the question of 
monopoly running all through our industrial system, re- 
quiring in my judgment political and legislative action. 

The well organized trade union can arbitrate with 
the employers all questions in dispute between them. 
It can reduce the hours of labor, establish a Satur- 
day half-holiday, charge extra pay for overtime, 
prohibit the employment of children of tender years, 
regulate the number of apprentices, insist on payment 
in money instead of truck, and enforce respectful treat- 
ment for its members while at work. 

As a trade union, it can agree to submit to arbitration 
the disputes growing out of any and all such questions. 
But arbitration cannot get rid of government by injunc- 
tion, abolish the monopoly of land, money, or transpor- 
tation, reform the tax system, or regulate franchises of 
public utilities. Yet these are all in the broader sense a 
part of the labor question. 

The union, in order to be successful in any of its 
undertakings, must organize all or nearly all persons 

213 



214 INDUSTRIAL CONCILIA TIO AT. 

working at a given trade. To do this, it must allow the 
largest liberty of private judgment on all matters politi- 
cal. To run against any of the deep-seated prejudices 
of its members, either religious or political, would at 
once sow the seeds of discord and result either in 
breaking up the organization or in reducing its member- 
ship to such a small number that it could not enforce 
any of its demands. 

For this reason, whatever political action the unions 
wish to take must be taken in a non-partisan way. 
Unions can bring pressure to bear on a legislative body 
either to enact this law or to repeal that, but they cannot 
insist on their members either opposing or supporting 
this or that party without inviting disastrous results. 

The union I represent is one of the most powerful in 
our city. Its members must be strong and active. 
Their work is always associated with great danger. My 
experience as its business agent has been that much 
more good can be accomplished for our membership by 
being diplomatic, by faithfully carrying out our part of 
an agreement, than by swagger and bluster. But no 
matter how hard a business agent may work to avoid 
trouble, he gets very little credit. He is wedged in be- 
tween a large body of men on one side, chafing under 
real or imaginary wrongs, and not over-particular at 
times about keeping an agreement; on the other side, 
he is constantly confronted by a sharp class of contrac- 
tors who are ever ready to profit by any advantage that 
they can gain in secretly undercutting wages, and in many 
ways violating the letter and spirit of their agreement 
with organized labor. 

While I do not wish to defend everything that has been 
done by the Building Trades of Chicago, I insist that 



INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION. 21 S 

their mistakes were magnified and they were blamed for 
much which the contractors themselves were responsible 
for. Take, for instance, the limitation of a day's work 
by the plumbers' union, about which there has been so 
much complaint. This I am sure the union would not 
have done had it not been suggested and agitated by 
some of the bosses. 

Arbitration in the building trades received its first 
great impetus in Chicago some seventeen years ago when 
the long strike of the bricklayers was adjusted with 
Judge Murry F. Tuley as the independent arbitrator. 
Since then, the building trades have all adopted rules 
for arbitrating trade disputes. The boards created by 
these rules are composed of an equal number of the mem- 
bers of the union and the boss contractors, who only 
call in an independent party when they cannot agree. 
This has been the only kind of arbitration which the 
building trades have resorted to. I do not know of a 
single instance where any of the building trades have 
ever called upon the State Board of Arbitration. In- 
deed, the instances are rare of any trade in Chicago call- 
ing on the State Board. This is perhaps due, first, to the 
suspicion widely entertained that boards of arbitration 
appointed and representing a political administration 
have purposes to serve other than that of fair play 
between employers and employees; second, because 
members of such boards are usually strangers to the re- 
quirements of the trades in dispute and therefore can- 
not exercise the sound judgment in reaching a decision 
to be had by a board composed of persons connected 
with the trades. 

I have often thought that compulsory arbitration en- 
forced by the State would be a good thing, and yet I find 



2l6 INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION, 

few men in the labor movement favorable to it. Why 
this is so, I cannot say, unless it is because the working 
men believe that the courts and the various boards 
created by the State are generally on the side of capital, 
and therefore they are afraid to have their interests 
adjusted by them. 

But it seems to me that contracts could be entered 
into for a definite period of time between the unions 
and the employers setting forth all the conditions to be 
observed during the life of the contract, and that the 
violation of such agreement by either party would be as 
much a matter of judicial inquiry and adjustment as that 
of any other contract between our citizens in their busi- 
ness relations. If not, why not ? 



CONFERENCES AND AGREEMENTS OF RAIL- 
WAY CONDUCTORS. 

BY E. E. CLARK, GRAND CHIEF CONDUCTOR, ORDER OF 
RAILWAY CONDUCTORS OF AMERICA. 

IT is the disposition of the employer to secure the ser- 
vices of employees at rates of compensation and un- 
der conditions of employment least expensive to the 
employer. It is the disposition of the employee to secure 
the highest compensation and the most favorable con- 
ditions possible. Out of these natural, and naturally 
conflicting, desires grows the situation which is termed 
the conflict between capital and labor, and which is 
sometimes spoken of as an irrepressible conflict. 

The desires mentioned are a part of human nature 
and an effort to secure those desires is in accord with 
the first law of nature. In years gone by, the employer 
has been disposed to say: ''You are my servant. I am 
master. If you do not like the conditions and the com- 
pensation fixed and granted by me, you are at liberty to 
seek employment elsewhere.'* The employee said in 
turn: "We must have more pay or certain changed con- 
ditions of labor.'* Possibly the views of the situation 
from the employees' standpoint were ex parte, and pos- 
sibly their demands exceeded the limits of justice and 
reason. The employer was wont to answer the demand 
with a flat refusal, and thus the two interests became 

217 



21 8 INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION. 

arrayed against each other diametrically, and, instead of 
coming together to reason the subject to a logical con- 
clusion, each would seek to entrench himself in a 
position which promised advantage and gave hope of 
ultimate success. 

If the employer and his employees, one represented 
by the officers in charge, the other by the committee, 
and, if necessary, the officers of the organization, would 
draw closely together and sit down in a friendly, dis- 
passionate, and considerate way to discuss the situation, 
in nine cases out of every ten they would reach a com- 
mon understanding acceptable to both. Each must 
learn to respect the rights and feelings of the other. 

Employees are naturally much better satisfied and 
much more content working under conditions which 
they have had a voice in fixing than under those arbi- 
trarily imposed by the employer and probably not 
properly understood by the employees. 

Organization on the part of both employer and em- 
ployee should be as perfect as possible. Each should 
be dominated by a desire to be fair and to do right. If 
such organization existed, the arbitrarily disposed and 
hot-headed employer who resents the idea of his em- 
ployee presuming to question the conditions fixed by him 
in the conduct of his own business and in his own way, 
would, by virtue of being controlled by the regulations 
of the employers' organization of which he was a mem- 
ber, or by the more calm and cooler judgment of the 
lawfully constituted majority within such an organiza- 
tion, be restrained from precipitating trouble which, 
when it was over, could, by careful analysis, be shown 
to have no real cause other than a foolish or unreason- 
able determinatipn to uphold personal or official dignity. 



INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION, 219 

It is not to be wondered at that, in connection with 
the determination of the employee to have a voice in 
fixing the conditions under which he is to labor, his 
efforts to assert and maintain that right, and the disposi- 
tion of the employer to deny and withhold that right, 
some serious friction is created and some serious con- 
flicts occur. These have been undoubtedly necessary 
to the working out of this problem, however regrettable 
their occurrence may have been. New lessons have 
been learned from every instance of that kind. The 
conditions are growing better year by year. Employers, 
partially from a desire to be fair and considerate with 
their employees, and partially because the conviction 
that it is to be so has been forced upon them, are show- 
ing a willingness to concede to their employees the right 
to a voice in fixing mutually acceptable conditions of 
employment. Employees are realizing more and more 
the responsibilities resting upon them and the necessity 
for their being just and fair with their employers, as well 
as considerate of the rights of others, which must always 
be involved, to some degree, in a serious conflict be- 
tween an employer and any large number of employees. 
Employees are realizing more and more that a mere test 
of strength does not really settle any vital principle, and 
that the defeated one, instead of being convinced, simply 
submits through force of circumstances and bides his 
time, consoling himself with the knowledge that he has 
inflicted sore injury upon his opponent and with the 
hope that some time his day will come. 

The practice of employer and employee meeting on 
even terms, and in a friendly and conciliatory spirit, 
for the purpose of intelligent and frank discussion of 
these matters is, therefore, the rational, reasonable, and 



220 INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION. 

civilized way of meeting this question. If that way be 
adopted, the next and natural step is a friendly agree- 
ment to submit to arbitration such disputed points as the 
principals are unable to reach an agreement upon. If 
the proper spirit is entertained at the start and exercised 
during the discussions, there can be no fear of anything 
occurring to seriously mar the pleasant relations or to 
prevent the matter being carried to the logical conclu- 
sion of negotiations carried on in that spirit, — arbitration. 
If each knows at the outset that such points as cannot 
be agreed upon are to be submitted to arbitration, they 
will be much less liable to assume or maintain any posi- 
tion which their conscience and better judgment tells 
them is wrong or untenable. Simple fair-mindedness as 
between man and man will be the basis of the negotia- 
tions and the foundation stone of the conclusion finally 
reached. 

I know that much has been said on the subject of com- 
pulsory arbitration. My idea of the principle of arbitra- 
tion is the friendly submission of disputed points between 
two or more parties to an outside party, in the selection 
of whom the disputants have equal voice and whose de- 
cision it is agreed in advance shall be final and conclusive. 
In order to have arbitration in the sense that I see it, each 
disputant must feel confident that his interests are going 
to receive the same consideration that is shown to those 
of his opponent, and must have an abiding faith that 
the award will be rendered in a spirit of perfect fairness. 
It does not seem that these feelings or convictions could 
be entertained under compulsion, and it is also difficult 
to see how employees in this country could be compelled 
to submit their differences with their employers to arbi- 
tration and be forced to continue in employment pending 



INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION. 221 

the finding of an award without seriously conflicting with 
the provisions of the Thirteenth Amendment to the Con- 
stitution of the United States. 

Much has been said and written on the subject of the 
power of legislators and of the courts in this direction. 
In my judgment, an effort on the part of legislators or 
courts to compel arbitration would result in more harm 
than good and in ultimate failure. There is in this land 
an influence more potent than that of the legislator and 
a court higher than those established by legislative 
enactment. That influence and that court are public 
opinion. When public sentiment generally demands 
the enactment or the enforcement of a law, the law will 
be enacted and will be enforced. When public senti- 
ment generally is against any law that is on the statute 
books, that law will surely become a dead letter and any 
effort to enforce it will result in its being repealed. 

I am an optimist on this subject. I believe that the 
principle of arbitration as a means of settlement of in- 
dustrial disputes is gaining ground just as surely as west- 
ern-hemisphere civilization is making progress. I believe 
that the convictions of those most directly interested in 
industrial disputes are influenced very largely by the 
opinions and sentiments of the great public. I have an 
abiding faith in the good judgment and the fair-minded- 
ness of the large majority of the people. I believe that 
the judgment of the large majority will be invariably 
right if they properly understand the question. I be- 
lieve that meetings such as this one are steps in the right 
direction. They will have a more far-reaching effect 
than is now appreciated and will do more good than the 
promoters of the plan have dared to hope. Public 
opinion is educated and influenced and moulded by just 



222 INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION. 

such meetings as these. No better evidence of the fact 
that the principle of arbitration is rapidly gaining ground 
need be desired than the spectacle here presented of 
men fully representative of the employing classes and 
of the employed meeting with one common purpose to 
discuss the subject, while each entertains the highest 
respect and the greatest toleration for the views of the 
other. 

The Order of Railway Conductors, which organization 
I have the honor to represent, has pronounced emphati- 
cally in favor of arbitration in industrial disputes. The 
organization has a protective policy and under certain 
justifiable conditions would not hesitate to endorse a 
strike, but it will not resort to that extreme except in 
defence of simple right or of a principle and then only 
as a last resort and after it has been found impossible to 
secure an agreement to arbitrate the differences. The 
order has heartily co-operated with the other organiza- 
tions of railroad employees in the operating department 
by encouraging in every possible way a disposition to 
adopt arbitration as a policy and in an endeavor to pro- 
vide means for extending the application of this principle 
in so far as has been in our power. We have submitted 
a good many cases and disputed points to arbitration, 
and our experience has been such as to commend the 
employment of that agency in settling such disputes. 



THE INDIANA LABOR LAW. 

BY HON. R. S. TAYLOR, OF FORT WAYNE. 

I HAVE thought that as useful a contribution as I 
could make to the deliberations of this conference 
would be a short presentation of the principles of the 
Indiana Labor Law, enacted in 1897, with some account 
of its working. The law provides for the appointment 
by the Governor, with the advice and consent of the 
Senate, of two labor commissioners — one from the em- 
ploying interest and the other from the labor interest, 
not less than forty years old and not of the same political 
party. It is the duty of these commissioners, upon re- 
ceiving information of any strike, lockout, boycott, or 
other labor complication in the State affecting the em- 
ployment of fifty persons or more, to go at once to the 
place and exert themselves (i) to adjust the controversy 
by conciliation; (2) if that effort should be ineffectual, 
to endeavor to induce the parties to submit their differ- 
ences to arbitration; and (3) if that should be unsuc- 
cessful, after a lapse of five days, to investigate the facts 
with or without the consent of the parties. For arbitra- 
tion, the law provides a board consisting of the two labor 
commissioners and the circuit judge within whose circuit 
the controversy is located. To these the parties may, 
if they choose, add an additional arbitrator each, mak- 
ing in that case five in all. The judge is the president 

223 



224 INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION, 

of the board and the proceedings are conducted ac- 
cording to the rules of civil trials. The finding of the 
board is spread on the record of the circuit court and 
has the effect of a judicial order. Upon complaint of 
either party that the other is not obeying the order, a 
rule to show cause is issued by the court, upon which 
proceedings are had as in other orders in personam. 
These provisions invest the board with full judicial 
authority and vest in the court power to compel obedi- 
ence to the award in any suitable manner. 

The provision for compulsory investigation is the par- 
ticularly novel feature of the statute. In conducting 
that investigation the labor commissioners are authorized 
to compel the attendance of witnesses and the produc- 
tion of books and papers. At the conclusion of their 
investigation, they make a report to the Governor of the 
facts found by them, which he is at liberty to send to 
the press for publication. There the compulsory inter- 
ference of the law ceases. The arbitration provided for 
is entirely voluntary. After all efforts have been ex- 
hausted to induce the parties to accommodate their 
differences or arbitrate them, the investigation and 
report by the commissioners simply give to the public 
the facts as ascertained by an impartial judicial inquiry. 

The statute has been highly successful in its opera- 
tion. Fortunately for the people, the gentlemen ap- 
pointed to serve under it have proved to be judicious 
and skilful diplomats, earnestly devoted to their work, 
and have deservedly enjoyed a high degree of confidence 
at the hands of both employers and employees. The 
first official report by the commission shows that during 
the eighteen months covered by the report the commis- 
sioners tendered their services in thirty-nine strikes and 



INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION, 225 

lockouts. Of these there was a failure to adjust the 
differences between the parties in only seven instances, 
and in two of these the contestants on one side were 
non-residents of the State. In twenty-eight contests 
satisfactory agreements were reached through the media- 
tion of the commission, and in nineteen of these settle- 
ments the working men secured either an advance in 
wages or other improved conditions. In addition to this 
the commission prevented strikes in five instances by 
timely negotiations and was instrumental in having two 
boycotts declared off. The total number of employees 
involved in these controversies was approximately 13,815. 
The report of the labor commission for 1899 and 1900 
has not yet been issued. By the courtesy of the com- 
missioners I have been permitted to see a portion of it 
in advance of its presentation. It shows a still greater 
success in dealing with labor complications than was 
achieved during the preceding eighteen months. The 
number of strikes dealt with has been a little greater, 
eleven more, but they have been less extensive and less 
stubborn and less long continued. The average dura- 
tion of strikes covered by the first report was a fraction 
less than thirty days; during the latter period, less than 
half that number of days. Altogether, the greatest good 
accomplished by the commissioners has been in the way 
of conciliation. It being their duty under the law to 
interpose at once upon the appearance of any contro- 
versy, they are able thus to get the parties together 
before a prolonged struggle has embittered them toward 
each other. The commissioners state that they find this 
to be the most difficult part of their work. Once they 
persuade the parties to come together and talk over their 

difficulty, they rarely fail in securing an adjustment. 
15 



226 INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION. 

There has been very little occasion to make use of 
the provisions of the law for arbitration or compulsory 
investigation. But it is my opinion that the success of 
the commissioners in accommodating differences is 
largely due to the fact of the presence of these pro- 
visions in the law. The commissioners have powers of 
legal compulsion — not to compel an arbitration, but to 
compel a full disclosure of all the facts by each party. 
I believe that that fact secures for the commissioners a 
degree of consideration and influence whicTi they would 
not otherwise have. 

In their forthcoming report the commissioners will 
recommend some legislation providing some form or 
kind of compulsory arbitration in cases where the pub- 
lic are greatly inconvenienced by a strike or lockout. 
The details of their recommendation are still under 
consideration. 



THE MASSACHUSETTS STATE BOARD OF 
MEDIATION AND ARBITRATION. 

BY W. O. REED, PRESIDENT OF THE BOARD. 

THE presence of this company, representing so many 
conflicting interests, is satisfactory evidence that 
the fundamental doctrine upon which our Board pro- 
ceeds, that the overwhelming majority of the participants 
in the struggle want only what is fair, is correct. 

Notwithstanding the apparently inexplicable attitudes 
at times assumed, it is reasonably clear that the goal for 
which they ^re striving is fairness to all. No doubt 
there is a remnant among them who are actuated by a 
different motive. Certainly there are men who have no 
instinct of fairness in their natures. But they are noth- 
ing compared with the great world and may be omitted 
from our calculation. It is still true that deep in the 
hearts of mankind, controlling their actions, shaping 
their lives, is a conviction that one must be contented 
with what is fair. Confidence in the truth of this propo- 
sition is the principal thing that we carry with us when 
our Board goes out into the arena where men are striv- 
ing together. I do not mean simply that men will be 
contented with what they think is fair. They have pro- 
gressed farther than that. They have no stomach for 
contest after they have obtained what fairness, based on 
general opinion, calls for. 

227 



228 INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION. 

Whoever would step between the disputants as me- 
diator must approach his duty with the conviction that 
each will be satisfied with the fair thing. He must pro- 
foundly believe it. Even the most settled conviction 
that men only want what is fair is liable to shipwreck 
when one comes into the presence of the angry battle 
for supremacy, where each is endeavoring to destroy the 
other by any means within his power. Then men seem 
to strive only for victory and to plan the blow which will 
cripple the adversary, if not destroy him. 

While there is a certain rough equity in our natures, it 
is also true that all life is made up of contest. Our lives 
are a struggle against forces which oppose us, and which 
we are endeavoring continually to overcome. This holds 
in the industrial world as in every other department of 
life. When one feels that he has come up against an 
opposing force, he instinctively pushes ahead to meet 
and overcome the difficulty. If it is a matter of dispute 
between employer and employee, his attitude in no way 
differs from that toward obstacles of the various other 
sorts that it is his daily lot to meet. He summons his 
forces to put aside the difficulty or surmount the ob- 
stacle. He clears decks for battle. He feels that he 
must rely on his own right arm. He resolves to trust 
himself. Then, more than at any other time, his nature 
abhors the thought of allowing the matter to pass beyond 
his control by submitting it to an outsider. He proposes 
to win. He has nothing to arbitrate. 

This is human nature in the presence of difficulties, 
industrial as well as any other. We harden ourselves for 
the struggle. 

Now arbitration, or the submission of controversies to 
a third party, does not look to a change of human na- 



INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION. 229 

ture, or expect that the struggle of life will be either 
softened or abrogated as to industrial troubles. Its ad- 
vocate does not expect that men preparing for a struggle 
will suddenly and without reason drop their differences 
in the lap of the arbitrator. But it does rely on the 
knowledge that all men when they begin a controversy 
weigh the power of their opponent, and if they find them- 
selves matched, or likely to be worsted, will listen to the 
advice of the Duke in Shakespeare's play: *' Let your 
reason with your choler question what it is you go 
about." 

To run one's hand over the muscles of an opponent 
often has a peaceful effect and tends to allay the bellige- 
rent feeling. Arbitration will be a substitute for war 
when each has a wholesome respect for the fighting power 
of the other, and when each can see that defeat and 
rout are about as likely to come as victory. If a man 
is reasonably sure, however, of obtaining his end without 
loss to himself, he will have nothing to arbitrate. 

We did not arbitrate the Alabama claims with England 
because of any particular regard that we held for her. 
The feeling here was rather that of intense indignation. 
England was inclined to scorn our claim, but willing to 
arbitrate because she knew that she would get hurt if she 
did not do so. Each knew that the other was a power- 
ful nation and would deliver a heavy blow. We find the 
same thing to-day. It is the battle-scarred union that is 
willing to submit its differences. It is the veteran em- 
ployer, not necessarily in years, but in experience in 
labor difficulties, who is willing to let the points in issue 
pass under the judgment of an impartial tribunal. 

Unorganized labor, the new union, the employer who 
though old in years first meets a labor trouble, and who 



230 INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION. 

has not learned that **war is hell," such do not need ar- 
bitration. They believe that they can win out and are 
quite sure to have nothing to arbitrate. In proportion 
as the contestants learn to respect the ability of the op- 
ponent to inflict injury, and appreciate that victories are 
expensive, they will be willing to arbitrate, provided of 
course they have confidence in the tribunal proposed. 

We have no issue with those who believe that the 
world is growing better. The most beautiful thing in 
life to-day is the developed appreciation of the doctrine 
that it is better to give than to receive. Undoubtedly 
also the Golden Rule is the principle of action of the 
lives of more men and women to-day than ever before; 
but the arbitrator in his walks does not meet those peo- 
ple often. As we see it, life is a struggle for supremacy. 

Before I speak of the methods pursued by our Board 
I wish to call attention to the different uses of the term 
* 'arbitration " now in vogue. Although the difference 
between arbitration and conciliation is carefully observed 
in the act of the Legislature creating the Board, still in 
the popular mind the two are often confounded. While 
the word really means a submission by the parties to a 
controversy to a third party for a decision, it has come 
to mean in a popular way any substitute for open war- 
fare. It not only includes, in the minds of many, me- 
diation and conciliation by a third party, where there is 
no submission to his decision, but it is also made to in- 
clude negotiation by the parties themselves without the 
assistance of a mediator where they confer together be- 
fore open hostilities are commenced. The grievance 
committee of the union is often spoken of as an arbitra- 
tion committee, whose duties are to meet a committee 
from the other side before ordering a strike. The work 



INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION, 23 1 

of the arbitration committee is often considered complete 
when it reports back to the union its inability to settle 
with the employer, and a strike is often ordered there- 
upon without any further attempt at arbitration. I am 
inclined to think that it is in this sense of the word that 
many unions understand their provision that they are 
favorable to arbitration and that many of the younger 
unions would be loth to submit their grievance to arbi- 
tration, properly so called, after an ineffectual negotiation 
with the employer. 

It is true, however, I think that the older and stronger 
unions understand the word in its true meaning and are 
committed to its support. 

Under our law, arbitration is purely voluntary and is 
possible only while the relation of employer and employee 
is unbroken and the men are at work. The State does 
not provide for a submission when a strike or lockout 
exists. If one has taken place, the men must go back to 
work before arbitration can be entered upon. 

In cases of pure arbitration, we have the following 
provision as to expert assistants: 

** Each of the parties to the controversy, the employer on the one 
side, and the employees interested on the other side, may in writing 
nominate, and the board may appoint, one person to act in the case 
as expert assistant to the board. The two persons so appointed 
shall be skilled in and conversant with the business or trade con- 
cerning which the dispute has arisen. It shall be their duty, under 
the direction of the board, to obtain and report to the board infor- 
mation concerning the wages paid and the methods and grades of 
work prevailing in manufacturing establishments within the Common- 
wealth of a character similar to that in which the matters in dispute 
have arisen." 

In the great majority of cases arbitration is not re- 
sorted to, but the other function of the Board is callecj 



232 INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION. 

in play, — that is, conciliation, which is an endeavor to 
obtain a conference between the parties for the purpose 
of a settlement of their affairs with such assistance from 
the Board as they may desire or it thinks best to render. 

Let me give you a leaf out of our daily life. 

A newspaper clipping bureau furnishes us each day 
with clippings of all labor difficulties reported in the 
newspapers in the State during the preceding day. Each 
case is docketed as it comes in, in a docket which has 
the following headings: 

City or Town; Employer; Nature of Business; Date 
of Strike or Lockout; Cause; Number Out; Union In- 
volved; Result. 

At each meeting of the Board, unsettled cases are dis- 
cussed in their order. As soon as a case of any impor- 
tance presents itself, we visit the locality, obtain personal 
interviews with the parties, hear their stories, and offer 
suggestions which look generally to a conference at that 
time or later, according to the temper of the parties. 

Personal contact with each of the parties, patient, un- 
ceasing endeavors in spite of all obstacles and in the face 
of discouraging failures, is the price of success in bring- 
ing the parties together. After the first suspicions are 
allayed — suspicions that the other party has been instru- 
mental in bringing the Board into action — both sides uni- 
formly receive us with courtesy and are willing to give us 
an audience. It is remarkable to what a degree men are 
softened by suggestions, when they have confidence in 
the fairness of the maker of them. In many cases, when 
we have won the confidence of both sides, we are in a 
position to weaken the animosities and bring the parties 
nearer together. Unless some question of principle, real 
or fancied, intervenes, they will come quite together. 



INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION, 233 

From the middle of last September to the first of the 
present month, a period of about ten weeks, our docket 
has shown a list of about forty labor disturbances. Ex- 
amination of these cases showed that twenty-five were 
trivial and settled themselves in the course of a day or 
two. The remaining fifteen were of sufficient impor- 
tance to call for action by the Board. In each case the 
Board visited the locality and had interviews with the 
parties from one to ten times. During this period 
the Board has travelled to meet the parties, outside of 
the regular office travel, twenty-five hundred miles. 
We have begun work as early as six o'clock in the morn- 
ing and often finished as late as eleven at night. All 
that could be done has been done in order to bring the 
parties together. In some cases the men have gone back 
to work; in others it was a trial of endurance, neither 
party yielded, other men were gradually hired in, and 
the contest ended by a complete loss to the employees. 
In some of the cases this process is still going on and 
all efforts at mediation have failed. 

Of the fifteen cases fourteen have been cases of con- 
ciliation and only one of arbitration. Almost all of the 
time of the Board has been employed about cases of the 
former class. 

One department of the work of the Board I desire 
especially to mention because it seems to us the most 
interesting. We endeavor to bring about between em- 
ployer and employee, under our supervision, trade agree- 
ments which settle the main points of interest to them, 
and which contain a clause binding them, in case they 
shall be unable in the future to settle their differences 
amicably, to submit, without a strike or lockout, their 
differences to arbitration by the State Board, or a local 



234 INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION, 

or joint board if they prefer it. What we can do along 
these lines is clear gain, and lays the foundation, before 
controversies arise, for a fair and equitable disposition of 
them. Not infrequently our rooms present the pleasing 
picture of a meeting of committees of associations of 
employers with committees of the employed, or their 
representatives, who are honestly and earnestly looking 
for a peaceful solution of their troubles. We are, to- 
day, engaged in promoting an important agreement of 
this sort between parties, which, if consummated, will be 
a distinct advantage to the public as well as to the parties 
themselves. It may fail utterly, but it may succeed. 

**To climb steep hills, requires slow pace at first," 
but we believe that we have begun to climb the hill when 
we have induced parties to agree beforehand to waive 
the battle and submit to the decision of a tribunal of 
their own choosing. We notice that at present such 
trade agreements are possible only where both sides have 
had their fill of fighting. It will be long before such 
understandings will be general, but we believe that as 
time goes on and as men slowly learn that even the 
victor suffers greatly in industrial warfare, they will tend 
to come to a peaceful agreement to avoid the struggle. 
More hopeful still is the attitude of both contestants 
when, without the aid of the Board, they enter into a 
compact that, without a strike or lockout, they will sub- 
mit all their differences to the State Board, or to a local 
or joint board. This movement is meeting with con- 
siderable favor among some of our manufacturers and 
their employees in Massachusetts, and as far as we 
know is considered by them as a solution of the labor 
problem. It is needless to say that we foster 3uch 
arrangements. 



INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION, 235 

We do not dread the increasing power of both sides 
and their increasing ability to do each other harm. The 
probability is not that one will overcome the other, but 
rather that each, out of respect for the strength of the 
other, will have a sufficient regard for his own safety to 
avoid the battle. 

In a certain sense, the industrial world seems to be in 
a preparatory stage in this matter and to be busied about 
certain preliminary questions. When these have been 
worked out the field for arbitration will be more ap- 
parent. 

The legal right of men to combine, though long dis- 
puted, is now freely and fully admitted. And yet very 
many employees have the same feelings of hostility to 
combinations that once led the community to pass 
statutes against them. Capital is turning all its energies 
towards production and only gives a thought to the 
labor question when brought up against it. It is often 
inclined to repress organization among employees and 
to oppose it on general principles, although it is obliged 
to concede the full right of the other party before the 
law. Time will bring about a better feeling on this sub- 
ject, we may hope, now that the first and most difficult 
step has been taken. At the present, it is certain that 
the uncompromising attitude of the parties on this issue 
of organization is a leading cause in keeping up the trials 
of endurance which it is the object of arbitration to 
supplant. 

It seems not unreasonable to expect when such ques- 
tions as these have dragged their slow length along, and 
are finally disposed of, settled forever, that mankind will 
turn from the trial by the ordeal, and accept a more 
reasonable settlement in industrial quarrels as they did in 



236 INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION. 

the thirteenth century in the other quarrels of ordinary 
life. It is a long time since the Anglo-Saxon settled a 
question of the title to a piece of land by trial by 
battle or duel between the parties, but it was also a long 
time before the jury supplanted this barbarous custom. 
One may read in Glanvill, the author of our first English 
law treatise, in about the year 1200, an encomium upon 
the jury system, which was then displacing the duel: **It 
[the jury system] so well cares for the life and condition 
of men that every one may keep his rightful freehold and 
yet avoid the doubtful chance of the duel, and escape 
that last penalty, an unexpected and untimely death.** 

In this contest the question of what is a fair day's pay 
is often settled by a trial by ordeal, so to speak, to see 
whether the man or the machine can go the longer with- 
out food, and the process is about as satisfactory as the 
ancient custom was. When the parties appreciate the 
danger of this mode of settlement of honest differences, 
they will look more sharply than at present for a substi- 
tute. In the meantime it is the office of boards, by ed- 
ucation, by patient endeavors, by conciliation, and by 
courting the confidence of both sides, to prepare the 
way. As for us, we are looking steadfastly to the future. 
We have ** hitched our wagon to a star." 

The century now dawning has undoubtedly much in 
store for those who believe in arbitration, but what system 
will be established, and when, no man can tell. Some- 
times it seems as though some system was about to be 
quite generally adopted, and again, it is as far away as 
ever. International and industrial arbitration seem to 
go hand in hand. One day nations are ready to agree 
that international differences should be arbitrated, and 
the next they leave an order with Krupp. 



INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION. 237 

It is perhaps enough to say, that the establishment of 
some means of amicably settling differences is in the line 
of human progress, and for that reason alone deserves 
the best thought of us all. 



THE INNOCENT PUBLIC — ITS CASE PRE- 
SENTED BY A FARMER. 

BY JOHN M. STAHL, SECRETARY OF THE FARMERS* NA- 
TIONAL ASSOCIATION. 

IT is a well known fact that frequently in war the non- 
combatants suffer almost as much as those in the field, 
^n labor wars it is frequently the case that what has been 
well termed the ** innocent public" suffer almost or 
quite as much as the belligerents. Of the innocent pub- 
lic the farmers constitute the most considerable part, 
whether the number of employers, the number of labor- 
ers, the capital used, or the labor employed, be con- 
sidered, ^ore than twice as much actual capital is 
employed in farming as in any other industry in this 
country. And while, for example, the debt of railways 
equals their capital stock, and in some cases the debt 
fully equals the value of the roads, farmers are in debt 
for less than ten per cent, of the value of their property. 
The gross earnings of all the railways of the country are 
less than one half the annual product of our farms. The 
capital employed in manufacture is only one third of 
that employed in farming, and the laborers are an even 
less fraction. All the capital of our national banks is 
only three per cent, of the capital of farmers and only 
one fourth of the annual products of our farms. And 
the value at the mine of all the coal produced in this 

238 



INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION, 239 

country in 1899 was less than one third of the value on 
the farm of the corn crop alone. Farmers constitute 
by long odds the most important class of the public, in- 
nocent or otherwise, whether capital or labor, employer 
or laborer, be considered. 

It is apparent that the farmer has a right to claim 
consideration as a part of the innocent public; and if 
we emphasize the innocent^ the rightfulness of that claim 
becomes all the more apparent, for while farmers are the 
greatest employers of labor in the country, and while 
farm laborers are the most numerous class of laborers in 
the country, in all our history there has not been a lock- 
out or a strike on the farm, and in all our history it has 
never been necessary to call out the militia, much less 
the troops of the regular army, to suppress a riotous mob 
of farmers or of farm laborers. 

Therefore we farmers have the best right of all to be 
the spokesmen of the innocent public in asking. Has the 
innocent public no rights that those responsible for lock- 
outs and strikes are bound to respect ? Are urban em- 
ployers of labor and urban working men not subject to 
what the writers on government agree is an obligation 
of all that enter into the social relation and enjoy its 
benefits, to recognize and respect certain rights of their 
fellow-members of organized society; or are they privi- 
leged to take whatever forcible measures they choose, 
though dictated by passion and prejudice instead of 
justice and reason, and pursue their course regardless 
of the hurt they may do to others ? Are urban employ- 
ers of working men and those working men subject to the 
fundamental obligations of the members of society and the 
beneficiaries of government, or are they superior beings, 
free to engage in labor wars that involve large loss and 



240 INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION. 

great inconvenience to thousands of others, the denial 
of liberty of lawful action to those willing to work, and 
the occasional clubbing or shooting down of citizens by 
those hired by employers or those in sympathy with 
strikers, thus taking from others what have been asserted 
to be **certain inalienable rights of life, liberty, and the 
pursuit of happiness ** ? 

» There can be but one answer to these questions: The 
innocent public has rights. There should be no lockout 
or strike without ample cause and not before all reason- 
able means have been tried to settle the dispute that 
threatens it. This would be the answer of farmers to 
those questions. - And as we have seen that the farmers 
have the best right of all to put these questions, it is also 
true that they, being in greater degree than any other 
class both employers and employees, are in a position to 
seek an answer with the least bias and prejudice. 

But from the answer we give to these questions, it 
must not be inferred that we favor compulsory arbitra- 
tion or other forcible outside methods of settling labor 
disputes. We do not favor them. Probably this is 
chiefly due to our belief that they are impracticable, and 
many of us believe that they are unnecessary. There 
seem to be grounds for the contention of some that 
compulsory arbitration, at least if it decided that strikers 
must go to work, would be unconstitutional. But there 
is a yet higher law in this country — public opinion en- 
forces or nullifies laws. Positive public opinion favor- 
able to a law is necessary to its enforcement, and to 
create such a public opinion favorable to compulsory 
arbitration would take more effort than is needed to 
make a public sentiment that will settle labor troubles 
and avoid labor wars by other means. Individually I 



INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION. 241 

believe that every one, rich or poor, should diligently 
engage in useful employment. If he will not do this 
willingly, he should be compelled to do it. No one has 
a right to be a burden on society or even a presumptive 
burden on society. We ought to put to work every idle 
person capable of work in cleaning streets, building 
roads, making dams and ditches for irrigation, and dig- 
ging ship canals. But I know how useless it is to expect 
the American people, so jealous of individual rights, 
ever to enact and enforce a law to compel the willingly 
idle to work for the public; and how much less will that 
public enact and execute a law compelling those that are 
idle, not to work for itself, but for some individual or 
corporation with whom these idle laborers are in bitter 
dispute, and about the very matter of laboring. Farmers 
do not believe that compulsory arbitration is the best 
solution of labor troubles, even in quasi-public employ- 
ments. 

What, then, is the best solution of labor troubles and 
the one the innocent public has a right to demand shall 
be fairly, earnestly, persistently tried in every case ? 
The experience of the National Stove Makers' Defence 
Association and of the Stove Moulders' Union of Amer- 
ica gives the answer. To a lesser degree, because it is 
of shorter duration, the experience of the coal mine 
operators and miners of Illinois gives the answer. So, 
too, the experience of many individual employers and 
their employees gives the answer. 

I will say briefly that this plan is simply to bring 

employers and employees together in conference when 

a labor dispute develops, the men keeping at work 

pending adjustment. Not employers, laborers, nor the 

innocent public suffer. It is certainly necessary that 
16 



242 INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION-. 

employers and their workmen should meet, by their 
representatives, in conference as reasonable men, believ- 
ing that they may possibly be wrong and the others 
right; and it would seem that it is very desirable, if not 
necessary that there be a strong organization of both 
parties, especially of the working men. 

Now here is where the innocent public may make 
itself felt. If made to understand the fact that a lock- 
out or strike that occasions it a great inconvenience and 
a loss of millions of dollars is probably a crime against 
it, occasioned by arrogance or stubbornness and igno- 
rance, public sentiment will so heartily, generally, bitterly, 
condemn the men responsible for a lockout or strike that 
such occurrences will be very rare. The cynic may talk 
to the contrary, but public sentiment is very powerful 
in this country. Let the public understand that it is 
grievously imposed on by a strike or lockout; that for 
years strikes and lockouts have been avoided in one of 
our important industries by employers and men simply 
getting together as men respecting each other to discuss 
their grievances; and public sentiment will force em- 
ployers and men in other industries thus to settle their 
difficulties. 

Strong organizations of employers and laborers will aid 
greatly, if they are not necessary, for they will restrain 
the hot-headed and reckless, who are responsible for 
lockouts and strikes. Also, if both sides are well organ- 
ized they are more apt to respect each other and therefore 
to enter into conference, and in a reasonable frame of 
mind that does not preclude just concessions. Our 
labor organizations are now guided and controlled in 
general by men who are more intelligent, broad-minded, 
reasonable, and conservative than the mass of the organ- 



INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION, 243 

izations. Because of this and the respect in which strong 
organizations are held by employers, those laborers that 
are best organized are least often concerned in strikes and 
lockouts. It is a new or imperfect organization that is 
most often concerned in a strike or lockout, and it is 
the organization strong in numbers and years that rarely 
has to deal with a strike or a lockout. This is a fact we 
may well give the most careful consideration. It is a 
fact that very largely justifies labor organizations and 
that may aid much in determining the plan to avoid 
labor wars. Because of this fact farmers, such an im- 
portant part of the innocent public, are favorable to 
labor organizations; and because of the further fact that 
such organizations, when wisely led, are, by making their 
members more intelligent and cultured, the most power- 
ful agents in raising the plane of living of city working 
men, hence of increasing their wages. And this means 
better demand and higher prices for farm products. 
True, it also means higher prices for what we farmers 
have to buy. But as the great majority of farmers sell 
more than they buy, they have a net gain because of the 
prosperity of working men and all other classes in the city. 
Therefore, irrespective of the losses often inflicted on 
them directly by lockouts and strikes, farmers are op- 
posed to those labor wars that inflict such severe losses 
on the public and lessen the general prosperity. We are 
heartily in accord with the purposes of this conference, — 
to arouse the public to the evils of labor wars, and to the 
fact that they are not necessary and are an imposition on 
the innocent public; and to a discussion of the best ways 
and means of settling disputes between employers and 
workmen without loss to them and without involving the 
innocent public. 



THE LEGAL PHASE OF THE ARBITRATION 
QUESTION 

BY MORRIS M. COHN, PRESIDENT BOARD OF TRADE, 
LITTLE ROCK, ARK. 

EVER since the foundation of our government, the 
existence of strikes has been known in this country. 
And it has been common knowledge for a long time 
that these unfortunate methods of cure have necessarily 
involved a great deal of human suffering, principally 
among the weak and dependent ones. The conscious- 
ness of this has made the bitterness of the contest still 
greater than it otherwise would have been, and has 
tended to extend the employment of the boycott. The 
parties which have been affected on this account 
have not only been the wives and children ; but whole 
communities, even States, have been affected. Mani- 
festly it were well if some method could be found that 
would furnish a means of settlement of those differences 
which now are the occasion of strikes. Congress and 
State legislatures must feel that such an achievement 
would afford greater assurance of the continued success 
of our experiment in government than any other one 
pressing for solution. 

I do not intend to discuss the question of arbitration 
from the sociological or economic standpoint, nor to 
point out any course of action that may be successfully 

244 



INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION. 245 

used to meet the evils referred to. All that I will under- 
take to do in this paper is to present the legal phase of 
the arbitration question. 

The history of early English procedure countenances 
the idea that the early administration of justice was first 
a process of oral hearing before the whole clan or its 
elders, and the judgment was immediate.* Here, clearly, 
there is little resemblance to a voluntary selection of 
arbitrators. And the later history of the subject in Eng- 
land shows that the next step in progress was a hearing 
before a representative of a lord or potentate, with the 
assistance of others who came as representatives of the 
hundreds or other aggregates, and consisted of listening 
to the parties and their compurgators, or in furthering a 
settlement of a controversy by wager of battle or law, or 
by ordeal. At a period quite advanced in the develop- 
ment of English history the process of trial by jury came 
in, which resulted from a separation of the function of 
judging from that of testifying. It was long ago the estab- 
lished result of this legal progress that the jury, though 
selected from the vicinity, were selected because of their 
want of knowledge, and the facts were proved by wit- 
nesses, called by each side, who testified before the jury, 
to the matters relied on in the pleadings. 

This process of development has been meagrely de- 
scribed, and no claim is made to perfect accuracy of 
statement, which would require much more detail.* 

^ For some observations on the origin of Judicial systems and 
laws, see Herbert Spencer, Principles of Sociology, vol. ii., part v., 
chaps. 13 and 14. 

^ Cf, Heinrich Brunner, Entstehung der Schwurgerichte ; Thayer, 
Development of Trial by Jury ; Pollock and Maitland, History of 
English Law, vol. ii., book ii., chap. 9, sec. 4. 



246 INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION, 

But the account given indicates that the system of trying 
cases in English law was quite other than that of 
arbitration. The procedure in English law, as is well 
known to lawyers, became more casuistical and intricate 
as it grew, developing into a system of writs and 
common-law procedure, accompanied by the growth of 
chancery and exchequer courts. 

The result was, that by the English common law, which 
we inherited, agreements to submit to arbitration dis- 
putes or suits at law were held to be non-enforceable 
by the courts.' Chancery courts declined to specifically 
perform them.* It was deemed to be against public 
policy for the courts to recognize tribunals or methods 
of settling disputes by a kind of judicial procedure not 
contemplated by law. And the courts still largely ad- 
here to the idea that it is not competent for parties to 
substitute arbitrators for judges or convert judges into 
arbitrators.^ Experience, however, even prior to the 
independence of this country, demonstrated that this 
attitude of the courts did not meet the requirements of 
the English people. As Sir William Blackstone has said: 
* 'Experience having shown the great use of these peace- 
able and domestic tribunals, especially in settling mat- 

* Scott V. Avery, 36 English Law and Equity, 336 ; S. C. 5 House 
of Lords, 811 ; Roper zk Lendon, i El. and EL, 825 ; Scott v. Insur- 
ance Company, Stuart, 152 ; Stephenson v. Insurance Company, 54 
Maine, 55 ; Insurance Company v, Creighton, 51 Georgia, 95; Cobb v. 
Insurance Company, 6 Gray (Mass.), 192 ; Chitty, Contracts, vol. ii., 
1183 (nth Am. Ed.); American Digest, Century edition, vol. iv., p. 31. 

^Pomeroy, Specific Performance of Contracts, sec. 291. 

-Cooley, Constitutional Limitations, * 399 ; Trott v. Insurance 
Company, i Clifford (U. S. Circuit), 439 ; Cobb v. Insurance Com- 
pany, supra ; Stephenson v. Insurance Company, supra; Insur- 
ance Company v. Creighton, supra. 



INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION. 247 

ters of account, and other mercantile transactions, which 
are difficult and almost impossible to be adjusted on a 
trial at law; the legislature has now established the use of 
them, as well in controversies where causes are depend- 
ing, as in those in which no action is brought; enacting 
by statute 9 and 10 Wm. III., c. 15, that all merchants 
and others, who desire to end any controversy, suit, or 
quarrel (for which there is no other remedy but by per- 
sonal action or suit in equity), may agree that their 
submission of the suit to arbitration or umpirage shall 
be made a rule of any of the king's courts of record,*' 
etc.* This legislation has been copied by some of the 
States. Compulsory arbitration is not contemplated by 
these statutes. 

For the most part, compulsory arbitration remains an 
unknown quantity in this country,^ though the courts 
of the United States have modified their views as to the 
enforceability of agreements to submit matters to arbitra- 
tion, in exclusion of the right to bring a suit in regard to 
the matter. Now it is quite generally held that policies 
of insurance requiring a submission of the question of 
amount of damage to goods or property affected by fire 
to arbitration, before a suit can be brought on the policy, 
are binding, if nothing has been done to waive the same.*'' 
Contracts for the construction of buildings and rail- 
roads which provide that no claim shall be made for 
work or materials until an estimate has been duly allowed 
by the supervising architect or engineer, have been held 

^ Blackstone, Commentaries, book iii., 16, 17. 

^Cf. English and American Encyclopcedia of Law, vol. i., article 
*' Arbitration " ; American Digest, Century edition, vol. iv., article, 
*' Arbitration and Award," sec. 10. 

' See authorities in note i, p. 246. 



248 INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION, 

valid and binding; and parties have been held bound by 
such estimates, and not entitled to recover until they 
have been made, and then not in excess thereof, unless 
fraud or overreaching can be shown/ And though 
chancery courts announce their inability to specifically 
perform agreements to submit to arbitration, they do 
not allow parties to be defrauded out of their rights 
on this account; as in cases where agreements pro- 
vide* for the valuation of property, leaving the ques- 
tion of value to be settled by arbitrators to be selected 
by the parties, and the owner refuses to appoint arbi- 
trators. In such cases the chancery courts will not 
allow the agreement to fail on account of the owner's 
wrongdoing.' 

These were cases in which property interests are at 
stake, or damage had already accrued. But in the case 
of labor disputes the question relates to a wage still to be 
earned or a service still to be performed, and still to be 
contracted for. If, in this class of cases, the parties 
choose to agree to submit their disputes as to wages to 
arbitration, and arbitrators are selected, and they fix by 
honest award the wage to be paid or the service to be 
performed, and the employer and employee enter into 
relations upon the faith of these findings, there can be 
no doubt that the award will bind the parties.® There 
is something to sustain the belief that, if a question 
should arise which the parties had previously agreed 
they would leave to arbitration, this will preclude a 

* American Digest, Century edition, vol. xi., article, ** Contracts," 
sec. 1308, seq. 

^Cf. American Digest^ Century edition, article, ** Arbitration and 
Award," sec. 108. 

^ Id,y sec. 440, 



INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION, 249 

recourse to the courts before arbitration has been had, 
or in disregard of the award. ^ 

But this will not meet the evil, and it can only be met, 
so the argument assumes, by legislation which shall be 
compulsory on both parties. And the question arises, 
to what extent may Congress and our State legislatures 
compel a resort to arbitration, and provide a process of 
arbitration for this purpose ? 

The Seventh Amendment to the Constitution pf the 
United States gives a right to trial by jury in all civil 
cases at law where the value in controversy exceeds 
twenty dollars. The federal courts hold that this right 
cannot be taken away, except by the assent of the 
parties entitled to it,'* and they also hold that this pro- 
vision applies to the territories of the United States.^ 
This being so, in such cases no person can be compelled 
by Congress to submit his controversy to arbitration.* 
A penal law is probably in the nature of a criminal law, 
so far as relates to the right of trial by jury. ^ If it is 
not it is at least in the nature of a civil law. If it is 
equivalent to a criminal law, under Article III. of the 
Constitution of the United States, it must be tried by 

* See note i, p. 248. 

2 Hodges V, Easton, 106 U. S., 408 ; Killian v, Ebbinghaus, no 
U. S. 568 ; Scott V, Neeley, 140 U. S. 106, 109, no. 

3 Webster z/. Reid, 11 Howard (U. S.), 437, 460; Callan v. Wil- 
son, 127 U. S., 540 ; American etc. Co. v, Fisher, 166 U. S., 464, 
468 ; Springville e/. Thomas, 166 U. S., 707 ; Thompson v, Utah, 
170 U, S., 343, 346. 

^ * Cf, St. Louis etc. Ry. Co. v, Williams, 49 Ark. , 492 ; Hare, 
ConsHtutionalLaw^ vol. ii., 863 seq. 

^ See Boyd v. United States, 116 U. S., 616, 634 ; Lees v. United 
States, 150 U. S., 476, 480 ; Iowa v. Railroad Company, 37 Federal 
Reporter, 497. 



250 INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION. 

jury/ If it is in the nature of a civil law, a right to 
trial by jury exists under most, if not all, of the State 
constitutions, and, as we have seen, the Constitution of 
the United States. And this right cannot be taken away 
in felony cases even with the consent of the accused/ 
There are similar provisions in all of the State constitu- 
tions, and the rulings mentioned refer to them/ So that 
if a controversy arises, or may arise, which entitles a party 
to a jury trial, compulsory arbitration cannot be enforced, 
without an amendment of our constitutions/ But, as- 
suming that labor disputes are not matters in controversy 
which can be understood to be embraced by the pro- 
visions of the constitutions of the United States and of 
the States which have been cited, then what of the law ? 

Congress and the States are, by the Constitution of the 
United States, prohibited from depriving any person of 
his property without due process of law, or without 
making compensation therefor/ Nor, under the same 
instrument, may any person be deprived of his life or 
liberty without due process of law/ 

Now a submission to arbitration is in the nature of a 
contract/ And the question is, can Congress or the 
States compel parties to submit to this contract, or to 

* Article III., sec. 2. 

^ Cooley, Constitutional Limitations^ 3d ed. , 399 ; Thompson and 
Merriam, yuries^ sec. 7. 

^ See also cases cited in next note. 

^St. Louis etc. Ry. Co. v, Williams, 49 Ark., 492 ; In re Bill re- 
lating to Arbitration, 9 Colorado, 629. See note 4, p. 249. 

^ Fifth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, sec. 
I, and Fourteenth Amendment thereto, sec. i. 

* Idem, 

^District of Columbia v, Bailey, 171 U. S., l6i, 171; Driggs ^, 
Morgan, 2 La. Ann., 151. 



INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION-, 2$! 

this curtailment of their right to contract ? The Supreme 
Court of the United States and the courts of the States 
have denied the right of the legislatures, under these pro- 
visions of the Constitution, or equivalent provisions in 
State constitutions, to interfere with the right to con- 
tract, on the ground that this right grows out of the 
right to be free, to do those things that grow out of the 
exercise of inalienable rights,^ and in one case, where a 
corporation was interested, it was put on the ground that 
such legislation was an interference with property rights.^ 

Still, as to corporations, it may be, where the power 
to amend charters has been reserved, that, as to them, 
compulsory arbitration may be provided ^ if the doing so 
does not interfere with the enjoyment of their property 
in the sense of a deprivation of property, without due 
compensation or due process of law/ For it is settled 
that corporations are not individuals to whom the pro- 
visions relating to life and liberty are applicable/ 

If the limitations above shown to exist are to be 

^ Allgeyer v. Louisiana, 165 U. S., 578, 589 ; State v. Loomis, 22 
S. W. Reporter (Mo.) 350 ; Kuhn v. Common Council, 70 Michi- 
gan, 534 ; Frorer v. People, 141 Illinois, 171 ; Eden v. People, 161 
Illinois, 290 ; Ex-Parte Jentsch,ii2 California, 468. 

^ Railroad Company v. Smith, 173 U. S., 684, 693, 696. 

^ Cf. Leep V. Railroad Company, 58 Arkansas 407, 427 ; Woodson 
V. State, 69 Ark. 521, 526 ; Railroad Company v. Paul, 173 U. S., 
404, 408 ; Holden^'. Hardy, 169 U. S., 366. 

"* See authorities in preceding note. A jury trial in the States is 
not assured by the Fourteenth Amendment. Railway Company z'. 
Iowa, 160 U. S., 389, 394; Brooks v. Missouri, 124 U. S., 394; 
Spiess V. Illinois, 123 U. S., 131, 166. C/, McNulty z^. California, 
149 U. S., 645. 

5 Paul V, Virginia, 8 Wallace (U. S.), 168 ; Railroad Co. v. Penn- 
sylvania, 136 U. S., 114, 118; Railway Co. v. Paul, 173 U. S., 404, 
406 se^ ; Leep z\ Railway Co., 58 Arkansas, 407, 427, 



252 INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION. 

escaped, in the case of individuals, and in the case of 
corporations where applicable, it must be by amend- 
ment to the constitutions of the United States and the 
States. It may be that, where State constitutions pro- 
vide for compulsory arbitration in these matters, and thus 
by constitutional amendment curtail the instances in 
which a trial by jury shall be a right, and affect to this 
extent the right to contract, the Federal courts, as well 
as the State courts, may uphold the same, in spite of the 
Constitution of the United States; though that is an 
open question which is by no means clear. ^ 

In closing the discussion of the matters which have 
engaged our attention in this paper, it is well to bear in 
mind that the province of Congress extends only to such 
interests as are conferred, either expressly or by implica- 
tion, upon it by the Constitution of the United States; 
and that the States enjoy the right to legislate regarding 
all internal police affairs, within their domains. This 
power of Congress may find expression in government 
contracts, in the regulation of post-offices and post- 
roads, in revenue and admiralty cases, and to cases in 
equity in federal courts, as well as in the regulation of 
law proceedings in the same courts. And the powers of 
the States may be expressed in revenue acts, acts relat- 
ing to the condemnation of rights of way, acts relating 
to assessments for local improvements, as well as in 
government contracts and court proceedings, etc.* And 

^ Cf, Railway Co. v. Paul, 173 U. S., 404, and authorities in notes 
2 and 3, below. 

2 This recital of powers is not intended to be exhaustive. Cf. 
Brown Gordon v. United States, 7 Wallace (U. S.), 188 ; Chorpen- 
ning V, United States, 11 Court of Claims, 625 ; Jersey City R. Co. 
V. Jersey City & H. R. Co., 20 New Jersey Equity, 61. 



INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION. 253 

it is conceivable that in the exercise of these powers a 
resort to arbitration may be provided for without coming 
into conflict with any constitutional provision. 

In revenue cases it has been held sufficient if the party affected 
has an opportunity to be heard before a board of equalization : Rail- 
road Co. z/. Backus, 154 U. S., 421 ; Kentucky Railroad Tax Cases, 
115 U. S., 321; Hagar v. Reclamation District, in U. S., 701; 
Davidson v. New Orleans, 96 U. S., 97 ; Wurts z^. Hoagland, 114 
U. S., 606 ; Murray v. Hoboken Land etc. Co., 10 Howard (U. S.), 
372 ; Railroad Co. v. Worthen, 52 Arkansas, 529. In cases of 
assessments for local improvements it is sufficient if a party has a 
hearing before a board of assessment : Wurts v, Hoagland, supra: 
Cases of condemnation under the prerogative of eminent domain 
do not necessarily require a jury trial : Hulrieg v. R. and Im- 
provement Co., 130 U. S., 559 ; Long Island etc. Co. v. Brooklyn, 
166 U. S., 685. Contempt proceedings do not require a jury trial. 
Ex-Parte Wall, 107 U. S., 625 ; P'insley v. Anderson, 171 U. S., 
loi, 108. There is no absolute right to a jury trial in an equity 
cause : Shields v. Thomas, 18 Howard (U. S.), 253, 261 ; Barton 
V. Barbour, 104 U. S., 126, 133. There is in some admiralty cases 
because an act of Congress so provides : Rev. Stat. U. S., sec. 566. 
Clauses in government contracts have been upheld which required 
the right to compensation to depend upon the certificate of a third 
person: Kihlberg v. United States, 97 U. S., 398; Sweeny v. United 
States, 109 U. S., 618. 



THE ATTITUDE OF LABOR UNIONS TO- 
WARD MACHINERY AND RESTRICTIONS 
ON OUTPUT.^ 

BY HENRY WHITE, SECRETARY OF THE UNITED GAR- 
MENT WORKERS OF AMERICA. 

THE question of machinery and labor involves the 
whole industrial problem. The complexity of con- 
ditions due to the introduction of machinery has caused 
wide differences of opinion upon the question of wealth 
distribution. Under the simpler methods of industry 
the manner in which the proceeds of labor were divided 
was more readily understood. To-day, however, the 
system is so highly organized that there is much con- 
fusion as to its workings. The perplexity is so great 
that many see in labor-saving inventions some malign 
purpose, and others again, who discern that any means 
which enhances the productiveness of labor must benefit 
mankind, are unable to comprehend the manner by 
which that result is effected. The habit of judging the 
operations of so complex a system by its effect upon 
certain interests rather than judging it as a whole ac- 

^ This paper, although prepared for the New York Conference, 
was not read at that time, but since it deals with the serious 
objection to labor unions referred to in the Conference by Mr. 
Schwab (see page 33) it is here included as a statement of the em- 
ployee's side of that question.— Secretary National Civic Federation. 

254 



INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION. 255 

counts for the common misconceptions regarding the 
service rendered by machinery to society. 

If people were to consider how meagre would be the 
rewards of toil without machinery, how costly the neces- 
saries of life, and how small the purchasing power of the 
laborer, the advantage of machinery would soon become 
apparent. The confusion is increased by the dual rela- 
tion which a person occupies as a producer and as a 
consumer. As a consumer, he benefits almost at once 
by every saving in effort, while as a producer his means 
of a livelihood may in consequence be threatened. The 
laborers thrown out of work by a machine, or even the 
merchant forced out of business through some combi- 
nation, cannot be expected to appreciate such economy. 
In both cases their horizon is limited to their own im- 
mediate means of a livelihood. 

When a person finds his occupation suddenly gone, it 
outweighs all other considerations, and, unmindful of 
the benefits he may have derived from similar economies 
in other trades, inventions to him seem a curse. The 
rewards of the particular invention which distresses him 
go to the body of consumers, and he only shares in- 
directly as one of them. In the case of the wage worker 
the gain is not as evident as it is with the manufacturer 
who first utilizes an invention. 

The confusion concerning the value of machinery 
is not strange, considering the absurd notions which 
are rife regarding the elementary principles of political 
economy. No distinction is usually made in the popular 
mind between useful and useless labor. There is sup- 
posed to be only a given amount of work to be done, 
and hence the inference that the less each one does 
the more jobs there will be to go around. If wealth 



256 INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION, 

be wasted or destroyed it will in some mysterious 
manner be replaced. The destruction of property by 
fire or flood is regarded with complacency by those not 
directly affected, upon the supposition that more work is 
thereby provided, without taking into account that the 
wealth required to replace it must be diverted from some 
productive use. The spending or circulating of money 
is equivalent to creating wealth. Luxury is looked upon 
with more favor than frugality, and it is even thought 
that gambling benefits a community as much as industry, 
because the fortunate ones spend freely and the misery 
which it begets is lost sight of. With such erroneous 
ideas entertained even by educated people, it is apparent 
why the complex operations of our industrial system are 
so slightly understood. The expansion of industry 
which follows labor-saving devices, the creation of new 
industries, and the consequent replacing of those dis- 
placed, is unintelligible to all save the few who compre- 
hend economic principles. 

There are historic causes which have created this an- 
tipathy to machinery. During the transition from the 
domestic to the factory system in England, machinery 
became a club to subjugate the laborer. Untutored, 
unorganized, without any resisting power, the former 
independent artisan, now a factory hand, was placed in 
brutal competition with his fellows, and every invention 
only added to his helplessness. The plight of the Eng- 
lish laborers at that time abundantly shows that there 
are circumstances in which the wealth of a nation may 
increase tremendously, the productive power of labor 
multiply many fold, while the workers, on the other 
hand, become impoverished and brutalized. Mill was 
of the opinion that machinery had not benefited the 



INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION, 257 

working class, but happily, since the time in which he 
wrote, education and organization, two indispensable 
factors in their advancement, have come to their aid. 
An upward trend has in consequence taken place, and 
the stimulus which it has given will make a relapse 
as impossible as the advance in sanitary science makes 
another visitation of a plague. Where the workers have 
succeeded in acquiring some independence in raising 
their standard of living, machinery, despite the draw- 
backs described, has undoubtedly become a potent 
factor in the elevation of their class. 

Under a collective system, the immediate benefit 
which would be derived by each individual through 
labor-saving inventions is the chief merit, but to com- 
pare the good features of an imaginary social system 
with the disadvantages of the existing one is an easy 
task. It can, however, be shown that this desired co- 
operative principle actually does work out at the present 
time in a rough way by the distribution of the benefits of 
inventions throughout society, and that there are pos- 
sibilities for its more perfect application. 

As to the workers* share in production, Karl Marx in 
his incisive analysis comes to the conclusion that the 
value of commodities is based upon the labor cost plus 
the profits of the capitalist. In that he is in accord with 
the authorities upon social science since Adam Smith. 
He deduces therefrom, that labor alone represents the 
actual wealth which is exploited for profit by the capital- 
ist, and that the very capital invested was previously 
appropriated from the laborer. Granting this conclu- 
sion, Marx should have made allowance for the com- 
petition between capitalists by which the price of com- 
modities is kept within certain limits and the benefits 
17 



258 INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION, 

of cheaper production are given to the consumer. In 
the cases Marx deals with, cheaper production unfor- 
tunately did not mean only more economical methods, 
but lower wages and longer hours and the sacrifice of 
the worker, while the consumer represented some one 
else than the operative, who barely subsisted on his pit- 
tance. Without the ability to purchase the goods he 
produced, England had to dispose of in foreign markets 
that which should have been consumed at home, always 
the best market. Her chief dependence being upon 
outside markets, everything had to be subordinated to 
cheaper production. 

Concerning the attitude of trade-unions upon the 
question of machinery, the membership being composed 
of men with the usual abilities, their views do not ma- 
terially differ from others. Having, however, the benefit 
of an education derived from a close study of economic 
problems and an experience which has helped them to 
form broader opinions, they are gradually reconciling 
themselves to machinery. In a resolution introduced at 
the late convention of the American Federation of Labor 
held at Scranton, by the delegates of the Cigarmakers' 
International Union, requesting that a certain firm be 
declared unfair, there was reference to a cigarmaking 
machine used in the shop of this employer. Although 
the machine was mentioned as an evidence only of the 
inferiority of the product of the concern, a vigorous ob- 
jection was at once raised by the delegates against any 
mention of the use of machinery by the firm. In the 
debate which followed it was argued that the convention 
could not afford to go on record as against labor-saving 
devices and that any attempt to oppose them would 
prove futile. The objectionable words were stricken out 



INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION. 259 

by a decisive vote. As to what action the convention 
would have taken if the delegates had thought it possible 
to suppress the machine is a question. The decision of 
the convention, however, has brought the movement to 
a point in which the members will be enabled to take a 
more liberal and completer view of the subject, and to 
realize that the limitation of work is not only impolitic, 
but that by increasing their capacities, the opportunity 
is afforded for them to insist upon a fair share in the 
larger product. The British unions have not advanced 
in that respect as far as the American unions, because 
the habits of the working people there are more set, but 
circumstances have also changed very much their atti- 
tude toward machinery. 

The Typographical Union is a notable example of a 
union which accepted a revolutionizing invention as 
being inevitable, and thus succeeded in securing a rate 
of wages for the operators considerably in excess of that 
received by hand compositors. An officer of the New 
York union estimates that each linotype machine intro- 
duced into the newspaper offices displaced three men, 
but that within three years, owing to the increase in the 
size of the newspapers and the larger demand for printed 
matter which it encouraged, the men laid off have been 
re-employed and that to-day the pay-rolls even exceed 
the former figure. This machine has also had the effect 
of elevating the standards of the craft, owing to the 
higher skill and education required. The competition 
among employers is such that profits are reduced to a 
minimum, the public therefore receiving the full benefit 
of the improvement. 

In the building trades similar results are also noted. 
Improved methods have led to a prodigious expansion 



26o INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION. 

in building operations. The laborious work is now 
largely done by mechanical means, and parts of a struc- 
ture, such as the trimmings, are made in factories and 
are only fitted together upon the premises. The sub- 
dividing of the work is carried on to such an extent that 
a number of contractors, each performing a distinct func- 
tion, co-operate in the completion of a single building. 
When this specialization began and the ingenious hod- 
hoisting device made it unnecessary for men to make 
beasts of burden of themselves, a general alarm was 
created over the prospect of great numbers of workmen 
being thrown out of employment. To-day a far greater 
number of men are steadily employed in this fundamen- 
tal industry than at any time in its history. 

Examples of this kind can be cited indefinitely to 
demonstrate the larger results which flow from greater 
economy in effort. Allowances are seldom made for the 
enterprises which could not be carried on at all were it 
not for labor-saving methods. 

The lowering of the costs of commodities enables the 
average person to indulge in what were formerly con- 
sidered luxuries, and those which encourage the devel- 
opment of new industries. The tendency under the 
influence of machinery is for industry to spread out fan 
shape, ever widening as the distance from the starting- 
point increases. Were it not for the limitations set by 
the purchasing capacity of the people, and the periodical 
disarrangments or panics which occur as a result of what 
is conveniently termed overproduction, there would be 
no check. To fear a surfeit of wealth seems absurd 
considering the needs of the average person. What is 
meant by overproduction is the inability to buy what 
has been produced. 



INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION, 26 1 

Russia, with her immense population, is unable to 
consume the products of her few mills, while in the 
United States, where the efficiency of labor is higher than 
anywhere else and is being increased at a marvellous rate, 
not to speak of the half-million aliens absorbed every 
year, the percentage of unemployed is lower than it has 
been for years, and even less than during the earlier part 
of our history when manufacturing was in its infancy. 

To increase the purchasing capacity of the people either 
by higher wages or cheaper products is to reduce the 
surplus and maintain the equilibrium, hence the economic 
value of higher standards of living. Production cannot 
be greater than the ability of the average person to con- 
sume, any more than water can rise higher than its 
source. Therefore increased production must be accom- 
panied by the same increase in consumption, if normal 
conditions are to be maintained. No matter to what 
extent machinery, division of labor, or economy in man- 
agement may be perfected, theoretically the demand 
for labor ought not to diminish. 

The eight-hour work-day is advocated by many, not 
because of the personal benefit to the workmen, but upon 
the same grounds that they wculd favor the curtailment 
of production, in the belief that it would increase the 
number employed. By decreasing the average amount 
of work done in order that it may be distributed more 
evenly, that object, as I have tried to explain, may tem- 
porarily be accomplished, but if generally practised there 
would follow a decrease in the demand for work through 
the increase in the price of the commodity. 

It is doubtful, besides, if workmen in a particular 
craft have ever succeeded for a length of time in erect- 
ing a wall around themselves and preventing as many 



262 INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION. 

extra men as could be employed from getting in if the 
emoluments were sufficient. Consequently, even if it 
were possible to so restrict work as to create a scarcity 
of workmen, this pressure from without would prove 
irresistible and the normal level would be maintained. 
If, on the contrary, a lack of work would make a number 
of workmen superfluous, there would be a tendency for 
them to find their way into growing occupations. Union 
regulations, such as apprenticeship rules, can and do 
prevent undue crowding into a trade owing to a sudden 
and temporary demand, which would prove highly in- 
jurious unless checked, for it would serve to break down 
standards held by the union. Through such means, 
an assimilation of those entering the trade is gradually 
accomplished. 

Unions have been frequently charged with trying to 
restrict output. The same accusation has also, with 
equal effect, been made against industrial combina- 
tions. In many cases where unions endeavor to prevent 
** rushing " or ** driving " injurious to the worker, they 
have been accused of limiting work. Such restrictions 
can be easily defended. That labor organizations have 
in some instances attempted to prevent the use of labor- 
saving appliances there can be no question, considering 
the prevailing ideas on the subject. Organized workmen 
can give force to what with others is only latent opposi- 
tion, but that such is not the policy of the labor move- 
ment, I have just illustrated. The opposition to 
labor-saving methods is not confined to workmen alone, 
for employers will rail against competitors able to give bel- 
ter service for less cost. The same resentment at being 
forced out of a settled occupation is entertained by all. 

The actual injury done by machinery is caused by the 



INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION, 263 

suddenness of the changes. Since there can be no 
way of regulating inventive genius, and the incentives 
for using improvements will remain as strong, the rational 
and the only way to meet them is by preparation. The 
working class suffers most because it is less able to ac- 
commodate itself to new situations. The rising genera- 
tion should be better equipped with a general knowledge 
of mechanics, and taught how to handle tools with skill. 
Such a training would undoubtedly relieve the difficulty, 
and it could only be adequately supplied by the public 
schools. The result would be to increase the independ- 
ence of workmen, as they would not then rely upon a 
small division of a trade, or upon a single employer. 
Independence and higher wages go together. Unskilled 
laborers in some cases earn more than skilled mechanics, 
for the reason that workmen trained only in one craft 
are usually unfitted for other work, while those accus- 
tomed to being thrown upon their own resources are 
more adaptable. 

It is regrettable that even the temporary disadvantages 
of industrial progress should fall heavily upon some to 
the advantage of others, but it is as unavoidable as fric- 
tion is to motion. The suffering can be mitigated only 
in proportion as our knowledge of the methods of indus- 
try increases, by recognizing the inevitableness of the 
changes and preparing to meet them. 

Economic laws, like the laws of nature, admit of no 
exceptions. Were that possible, the consequences would 
make the present hardships seem nothing in compari- 
son ; in fact, society would quickly disintegrate and revert 
to its primitive state. If society had to wait for the 
sanction of every person before a forward step could 
be taken, it would never start. In the process of 



264 INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION, 

adjustment and readjustment, which progress implies, 
it is unavoidable that some have to be forced out of 
settled grooves and made to fit into new ones. It is this 
adaptability to change which characterizes modern enter- 
prise, this willingness to suffer immediate discomforts 
for the achievement of larger ends. 

In the case of the aged workman the situation is 
especially hard, as he cannot find any place in an indus- 
trial system in which alertness counts for more than skill. 
He cannot profit by accumulated experience as others 
do. It is the tragic side of the question, this grievous 
predicament of the worker who has spent his energies 
adding to the nation's wealth. It can and ought to be 
overcome, not by any system of almsgiving, which must 
always prove inadequate, not by retiring him to idleness, 
but by keeping him employed at such work as his long 
training and peculiar abilities fit him for. As his earn- 
ing power declines at a certain period some system of 
insurance could supply the deficiency. 

One of the acknowledged evils of machinery is the 
exploitation of child labor which usually follows its in- 
troduction. Such was the case in England and we find 
it repeated again in the new industrial districts of the 
South. In those industries where the repetition of a 
small mechanical process enables child labor to be em- 
ployed, the temptation is to take advantage of the oppor- 
tunity; for children have no rights to assert, no wage 
scale to uphold nor working time to maintain. In that 
respect they are on a par with slave labor, and are more 
adaptable to the methods of modern production. It 
might be said with fairness that the capitalists utilizing 
such opportunities are not alone to blame, for short- 
sighted and grasping parents often drive their children 



INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION, 265 

into the mills because of the paltry sum which might be 
added to the family income, and in time they get into 
the habit of depending upon the pittance obtained at so 
terrible a sacrifice. 

The inducement of a ** plentiful supply of cheap 
labor " is also held out to capitalists by small communi- 
ties as a means of persuading them to invest in their 
neighborhoods. These considerations are the chief 
barriers to be overcome in abolishing child labor. In 
course of time, however, as the consequences become 
more evident, and the exultation over the acquisition of 
new factories wears off, the public conscience revolts 
against this debasement of childhood and the law is then 
evoked to protect it. The strenuous efforts being made 
in the South on the part of the labor organizations and 
sympathizers to enact protective laws lead us to hope 
that we shall at least be spared the dreadful experience 
of England during the first half-century of the factory 
system. 

As to the material advantages of machinery, it surely 
has enlarged the capacities of the people and multiplied 
their opportunities. The possibilities are such as to 
make the mind tremble in anticipation. It is the agency 
which alone can raise wages, reduce the working time, 
and enhance the buying power of money — a threefold 
gain. There is, however, notwithstanding these benefits, 
another and withal a more important side. Has it ad- 
vanced the worker as a man ? Has it increased his 
independence? Has it improved his social standing ? 
These are the questions which demand an answer, and 
unless it can be given emphatically in the affirmative, 
then the prodigious increase in wealth production has 
been without result. 



266 INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION. 

The feeling against machinery will not cease until the 
workman profits more directly as a producer; until he is 
treated as a human being and not as a mere animated 
tool; until he becomes more than a tender, an incident 
in production. The human element must become more 
evident, and the toiler made to feel his partnership. 
Then the true mission of machinery will be revealed to 
all as the only means which can liberate man from 
drudgery, increase his control over nature, and provide 
the leisure essential to a higher culture. 



APPENDIXES 



267 



APPENDIX I. 

APPEAL TO THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 

Adopted at the Conference on Conciliation and Arbitration, held under the 

auspices of the National Civic Federation, Chicago, 

Illinois, December 17th and i8th, 1900. 

To the American People^ Greeting : 

The Conference on Conciliation and Arbitration, held under the 
auspices of the National Civic Federation, animated by a desire of 
witnessing some practical benefits to the people of our land growing 
out of these deliberations, desires in a spirit of fairness to make a 
public appeal for greater sobriety of judgment on a subject of the 
first importance. We believe that the present time is peculiarly 
fitting, standing as we do on the border line of two centuries, to 
make such an appeal, and we believe we could in no better way em- 
ploy the last days of a dying century than by preparing ourselves for 
the highest duties of citizenship in the new century upon which we 
are so soon to enter. 

While addressing ourselves, for apparent reasons, more directly to 
all those who are called upon to mould thought and to shape public 
opinion, chief among which agencies are the pulpit and the press, 
this appeal is, however, intended for every American citizen, of 
whatever station in life. 

The secret of good citizenship we believe to be the restraint which 
the individual can and does place upon many of his own natural in- 
clinations, while the secret of success in life is, after all, dependent 
on the efforts which the individual makes to work out his own 
salvation, and the individual citizen is, therefore, specially urged 
to take a personal interest in the work outlined by this conference. 

We duly recognize that unless labor is regularly employed and has 
reason to be satisfied with its wages and conditions in life we cannot 

269 



2/0 INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION, 

have permanent peace nor substantial prosperity. We also recog- 
nize that capital must find adequate returns for its investment if 
wages are to be fair and discontent is to be averted. 

To the end that tranquillity in the industrial world may prevail, 
this Conference on Conciliation and Arbitration would make the 
following recommendations to the American people : 

First — That employers and wage-earners should enter into an- 
nual or semi-annual agreements or contracts. 

Second — That all industries in the United States should establish 
boards of conciliation within the several and varied interests, to 
which boards of conciliation all differences and disputes arising be- 
tween employer and employee, if not readily adjusted between the 
immediate interests concerned, may be referred for settlement. 

Third — Recognizing the fact that compulsory arbitration, aside 
from all other objections urged against it, is not at this time a ques- 
tion of practical industrial reform, and inasmuch as the systems of 
arbitration now in vogue do not seem fully to meet the requirements 
of the different interests, and appreciating the importance of the 
subject. 

We, therefore, recommend that the presiding officer of this con- 
ference appoint a committee to serve for a period of one year, to be 
composed of six representatives of the employer class and six repre- 
sentatives of the employee class, these representatives to be selected 
as nearly as possible from the different sections of the country, for 
the purpose of formulating some plan of action looking to the estab- 
lishment of a general ysystem of conciliation that will promote in- 
dustrial peace, and that this joint committee be empowered to add 
to its number and fill any vacancies that may occur. 

We would recommend also, that this joint committee be given 
power to appoint such auxiliary committees from the industries, 
trades, and professions as may seem best to promote the work of 
conciliation and education. 

We believe that this conference will have, in part at least, failed 
of its mission unless it strenuously insists that the proper time to 
arbitrate is not after a strike or lockout has been inaugurated, but 
before it has begun. We fully realize that all plans of arbitration 
and conciliation will be unavailing unless we are all animated by a 
spirit of fairness and justice and are willing to open our eyes to such 
rights as belong to every citizen, 



APPENDIXES 271 

In accordance with the above recommendations the presiding 
officer appointed the following named gentlemen to constitute the 
committee : 

A. C. Bartlett, Vice-President Hibbard, Spencer, Bartlett & 
Co., wholesale hardware; Samuel Gompers, President American 
Federation of Labor ; Henry W. Hoyt, President National 
Founders' Association ; John Mitchell, President United Mine 
Workers of America ; Herman Justi» Commissioner Illinois Coal 
Operators' Association ; Martin Fox, President Iron Moulders' 
Union of America ; E. D. Kenna, Vice-President Atchison, 
Topeka & Santa Fe Ry. System ; Frank P. Sargent, Grand 
Master Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen ; G. Watson French, 
Vice-President Republic Iron and Steel Company ; Henry 
White, General Secretary United Garment Workers of America ; 
Chaitncey H. Castle, President Stove Founders' National Defence 
Association ; James M. Lynch, President International Typo- 
graphical Union. 

APPENDIX II 

ADDRESS OF NATIONAL COMMITTEE ON CONCILIATION AND 
ARBITRATION, ISSUED MAY 8, I9OI, AT NEW YORK 



The National Committee on Conciliation and Arbitration, created 
at a convention held in the city of Chicago, in December, igoo, 
under the auspices of the National Civic Federation, and clothed 
with authority by that convention to organize and formulate policies 
and measures and to enter into active service in the cause of peace and 
harmony in the industrial world, realizing that the prosperity of our 
nation depends upon the steady and profitable employment of the 
people, that when the workers are idle capital is idle, and the in- 
terest of employer and employee are imperilled, hereby announces 
and declares its purpose to be the prevention of those most 
threatening of all industrial disturbances, the strike and the lockout. 



The scope or field of work of the National Committee on Concili- 
ation and Arbitration is briefly described as follows ; 



272 INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION, 

First — To form in the public mind the conviction that industrial 
disturbances in the nature of strikes or lockouts can and should be 
avoided. 

Second — Th'at the only reliable method of avoiding such dis- 
turbances is through full and frank conferences between employers 
and workmen, with the avowed purpose of reaching an agreement 
as to terms of employment. Trade agreements between employers 
and workmen where established for a definite term have so fully 
demonstrated their value in maintaining industrial peace that they 
should be generally adopted. 

Third — That under conditions existing to-day, and as they are 
likely to exist for the future, organizations suitable for comprehen- 
sive and conclusive consideration of those complex questions in- 
volved in the mutual relations of employers and workmen, are most 
valuable and important, and where possible should be utilized, but 
in any event the true and safe policy is comprehended in conference 
and agreement between employers and workmen covering as large a 
constituency as possible, and 

Fourth — That the surest way to keep organizations of employers 
and workmen free from unwise and injurious action is through co- 
operation and the mutual education and respect which will inevi- 
tably follow from it. 

To establish and maintain a board or commission composed of the 
most competent persons available, selected from employers and em- 
ployees of judgment, experience, and reliability, which shall be 
charged with the above-described duties, and shall also be expected 
to make known to workmen and employers that their counsel and 
aid will be available if desired in securing that co-operation, mutual 
understanding, and agreement already indicated as the general pur- 
pose of this National Committee on Conciliation and Arbitration. 

METHOD 

The general method of operation only may be outlined ; specific 
measures will have to be determined from time to time, as study, in- 
vestigation, and experience may show cause. 

The committee will secure the fullest possible information as to 
methods and measures of arbitration in vogue throughout the world ; 
it will put itself into communication with all representative bodies 
of workmen and employers, inform them as to its purpose, offer its 



APPENDIXES 273 

services and secure their co-operation and good will if possible, asking 
particularly of general organizations that whenever any specific 
questions arise where there is no established method of joint con- 
sideration and settlement existing, that the national committee 
be informed, in order that it may use its influence before trouble oc- 
curs. This method to be extended to local organizations when the 
committee may find itself sufficiently equipped to do so. 

The committee will adopt such measures as may seem feasible to 
disseminate through the general newspaper press, through maga- 
zines, periodicals, and special pamphlets, the results of its investi- 
gations, together with its recommendations and suggestions. 



INDEX. 



Address, National Committee on 
Conciliation and Arbitration, 
271, 273 

Adler, Felix, Member New York 
Board of Mediation and Con- 
ciliation, 7 

Amalgamated Society of En- 
gineers, Great Britain, 112, 
114 

American Federation of Labor, 
72, 197, 258 

Appeal to the American people, 
269, 271 

Arbitration : 
Committees, 47 
Definition of, 41, 43, 107, 141, 

142 
In Europe, 99, 140 
In minor matters, 152 
Not desirable, 180, 207 
And political action, 213, 216 

Bagley, Frederick P., on or- 
ganization of employers, 192- 
203 

Bell, Sir James, arbitrator, Scot- 
land, 121 

Board of Trade, Great Britain, 
104 

Boards of Arbitration, 140 

Boiler Makers and Iron and Steel 
Shipbuilders' Society, Great 
Britain, 120, 121 

Book trade, France, 134 

Boot and Shoe Workers' Union, 
63-67, 148, 149 ; Leicester, 
England, 1 18-120 



Brassworkers, ^ra'algamated, 
Great Britain, 128 

Bricklayers and masons' arbitra- 
tion, 145 

Bricklayers' Association of New 
York, 27-29 

Buchanan, Frank, on arbitration 
and political action, 213-216 

Builders, National Association 
of, 147, 148 

Building trades and machinery, 
259, 260 

Building Trades Council of 
Chicago, 198-214 

Building trades, Wolverhamp- 
ton, no, III 

Canadian Pacific Railway, 55 
Capital and labor, antagonism, 

94-97 

Castle, Chauncey H., concilia- 
tion, not arbitration, 176-187 

Chambers, Jas. A., President 
American Glass Company, 84 

Chevalier, M., conciliation in 
France, 102 

Chicago Conference on Concilia- 
tion and Arbitration, 89-253 

Child labor, 264 

Cigarmakers, attitude toward 
machinery, 258 

Clark, E. E., agreements of 
railway conductors, 217-222 

Clothiers' Association, National, 

37 
Coal Miners' Association, 11, 

151 



275 



2/6 



INDEX. 



Coal Miners' Association — Cont. 

France, 135-137 

Germany, 130 

Northumberland, 118 

Sliding scale, 153 
Cohn, Morris M., on the legal 

phase of arbitration, 244-253 
Collective bargaining, 42, 43, 45, 

46, 150 
Compulsory arbitration, 92, 163- 

166, 215, 220, 222 
Compulsory itivestigation, 224 
Conciliation : 

Definition of, 42, 107, 142, 
207 

And arbitration abroad, 99, 
140 
Conductors, railway, trade agree- 
ments, 149, 217-222 
Conferences, general, 153 
Conseils des Prud'hommes, lOi, 

102, 106, 131 
Cotton trade. Great Britain, 123 
Cribben, Henry, President Stove 

Founders' National Defence 

Association, 178 

Denmark, trade agreements, 132- 

133 

Dock laborers, London, arbitra- 
tion, 126 

Donnelly, John J., President 
New York Bricklayers' Asso- 
ciation, address, 27-29 

*' Driving," injurious to the 
workers, 262 

Duncan, Jas., First Vice-Presi- 
dent American Federation of 
Labor, address, 80-82 
-^^rDurand, E. Dana : 
Address, 40-48 
Arbitration in the United 
States, 141-154 

Dyeing trades, arbitration, 124, 
125 

Easley, R. M., Secretary Na- 
tional Civic Federation, 85, 92 



Eaton, Horace M., General Sec 
retary Boot and Shoe Workers* 
Union, address, 63-67 
Eight-hour work-day, 261 
Employers' Federation of En- 
gineering Associations, Great 
Britain, 11 2-1 14 

Farmers' view of arbitration, 
238-243 

Firemen, Brotherhood of Loco- 
motive, trade agreements, 48- 

Founders' Association, National, 

18, 155-175 
Fox, Martin, on Iron Moulders' 

and Founders' agreements, 

155-167 
France : 

Conciliation and arbitration, 

loi, 102 
Conseils des Prud^hommes^ 133 

Germany, arbitration, 130 

Glass trade, 151 

Gompers, Samuel, President "V 

American Federation of Labor, 

address, 67-72 
Great Britain : 

Trade unions, 33 

Conciliation and arbitration, 
103-130 

Hanna, Marcus A., address, 11- " 

13 
Hatters of North America, 

United, 24-27 
Hosiery and Glove Trade, Great 

Britain, 108- no 
Hoyt, H. W., on Iron Moulders' 

and Founders' trade agree- 

r'ents, 168-175 

Indiana Labor Law, 223-226 

Industrial Commission, United — 
States, 40, 141 

Ireland, Archbishop John, ad- 
dress, 14-18 ; 85-87 '^ 

Iron mining. Great Britain, 120 



INDEX. 



277 



I 



V 



Iron moulders, 21, 150, 151, 

155-187 
Iron and steel trades, 150, 153 

Great Britain, 11 1, 114 

Scotland, 121 
Italy, arbitration, 133 

James, Lord, arbitrator, 116 
Joint committees, 59, 152 
Justi, Herman, on organization 
of employers, 204-212 

Keefe, Daniel J., on agreements 
of the Longshoremen and Dock 
Managers, 188-191 

Kettle, Rupert, conciliation in 
England, 103, 123 

Lace trade, Nottingham, 121- 

123 
Laundries and bleach-houses, 

France, 134 
Legal phase of arbitration, 244- 

253 

London Labor Conciliation and 
Arbitration Board, 126 

'Longshoremen and dock mana- 
gers, trade agreements, 188- 
191 

Machinery, attitude of labor 
unions, 254-266 

MacVeagh, Franklin, opening 
address, Chicago Conference, 
91-98 

Marks, Marcus M., President 
National Clothiers' Associa- 
tion, address, 37-39 

Mason Builders' Association, 
New York, 148 

Massachusetts State Board of 
Mediation and Arbitration, 
227-237 

Masters and Workmen Arbitra- 
tion Act, Great Britain, 104 

Metal Trades Association, 18, 151 

Mine Workers, United, 78 

Miners* Federation of Great 
Britain, 114-116, 129 



Minor disputes, T52, 153 
Mitchell, John, President United 
Mine Workers' Union, ad- 
dress, 78-80 
Mundella, A. J., pioneer in con- 
ciliation and arbitration, Great 
Britain, 106, 109, 123 

National Civic Federation, 158 

New York Conference on Con- 
ciliation and Arbitration, 1-88 

New Zealand, compulsory arbi- 
tration, 92 

Nixon, Lewis, address, 59-63 

Organization, of employers, 192- 
212; of employers and em- 
ployees, 44, 70, 218 
National, 93, 143 

Overproduction, 260 

Pfahler, Wm. H., address, 19-22 

Phillips, John, Secretary Na- 
tional Hatters' Union, address, 
24-27 

Potter, Bishop Henry C, ad- 
dress, 8-1 1 

Pottery trades, 151 
Great Britain, 106 

Public, The Innocent, 238-243 

Reed, W. O., on Massachusetts 

State Board, 227-237 
Representation of employers and 

employees, 45 
Restrictions by trade-unions, 33, 

61, 199, 201, 215, 254-266 
Reynolds, Jas. B., University 

Settlement, address, 35-37 
Rosebery, Lord, arbitrator, coal 

miners' strike, 115 " 
" Rushing," injurious to the 

worker, 262 
Ryan, James, Vice-President 

New York State Federation of 

Labor, address, 29-32 

Sargent, Frank P., Grand Mas- 
ter Brotherhood of Locomo- 
tive Firemen, address, 48-58 



278 



INDEX. 



Say ward, W. H., Secretary Na- 
tional Association of Builders, 

. 147, 148 

O^-Schwab, Charles M., President 
United States Steel Corpora- 
tion, address, 32-34 

Sliding scale, 153 

Stahl, John M., The Innocent 
Public, 238-243 

State Boards of Arbitration, 167, 
215 

Stove Founders' National De- 
fence Association, 150, 153, 
157, 176-187, 203, 241 
^«»- Straus, Hon. Oscar S., opening 
address, 3-7 

Strikes, attitude of trade-unions, 

143, 144 
Switzerland, arbitration, 130, 131 

Taylor, Hon. R. S., Indiana 

Labor Law, 223-226 
Tillett, Ben, labor delegate from 

Great Britain, address, 73-78 
Trade agreements, 145, 150, 164 

Iron Moulders' Union, 160, 
161 



Legal enforcement of, 71 
Trade-unions, criticism of, 60 
Attitude toward strikes, 143 
Tuley, Judge Murry F., arbitra- 
tor, 215 
Typographers, Marseilles, 134 
Typographical Union, attitude 
toward machinery, 259 

Voluntary arbitration, 163 
Voluntary conciliation and arbi- 
tration, advantages of, 137 

Waldeck-Rousseau, Prime Min- 
ister of France, arbitrator, 135 

Weavers, Great Britain, 123 

White, Henry, The Attitude of 
Labor Unions Toward Ma- 
chinery and Restrictions on 
Output, 254-266 

Wright, Carroll D., Commis- 
sioner of Labor, 59 
Trade Boards of Conciliation 
and Arbitration abroad, 99 
140 



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Everett P. Wheeler. Illustrated. Paper, 40 cents; 

cloth . . . . .... . . 75 

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88— The War of the Standards. By Judge Albion W. Tourgee 

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89— A General Freight and Passenger Post. By James L. Cowles. 

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93— Our Right to Acquire and Hold Foreign Territory. By Charles 

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94— The Wheat Problem. By Sir William Crookes. . 1 25 
95— The Regeneration of the United States. By William Morton 

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96 — Railway Control by Commissions. By Frank Hendrick. i go 
97 — Commercial Trus|s. By John R. Dos Passos. 
98— Labor and Capital. Edited by John P. Peters. 

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